We’ve got a lot of people in Maine who came here from somewhere else – beyond New England, that is. I’m wondering if the old-fashioned cooks among them ever heard of baked beans.

I’ve lived in several states outside New England and I do not recall seeing canned baked beans, so I doubt if there were any dry beans, either. Once when I was grocery shopping in an out-of-the-way place in South Dakota, I did see a small can of beans – one or two cans only – and I figured it was a fluke they were even on the shelf.

As we break away from winter here in Maine, a couple of things happen: yard sales sprout like lawn flowers, suddenly appearing along the roadside; and baked bean suppers seem to be all the rage for going out to eat. Some of the best cooking can be found on the buffet table at a local church or Grange hall on a Saturday night. Blueberry cakes and pies, casseroles of all kinds, biscuits and cornbread – and of course, pots filled with aromatic baked beans. A variety is available: Jacob’s cattle, kidney, Great Northern, soldier beans, pea beans and my favorite, yellow eye.

Which brings me to the point of this week’s column and it’s in the “senior” category since so many of my peers know what I’m talking about – and maybe can help. I’ve promised to bake beans for a couple of suppers during the next month and since my cache of salt pork in the freezer has been used up over the winter, I’ve been searching for a new supply.

Looking for a slab of salt pork has turned out to be futile. I’m not sure, but it seems that only sliced salt pork is available – I’ve checked with Hannaford, Hoggy’s, Shaw’s and Walmart (alphabetically) and none sells salt pork in chunks, unsliced. A friend told me to get slab bacon – but bacon is smoked when it’s prepared, and that makes a difference in the taste. Any readers know where plain old unsliced salt pork can be purchased?

Along with pound cans of coffee that now contain much less than 16 ounces, and the smaller cans of soup and other food, the “experts” in marketing have changed the way salt pork is sold.

Decades ago, at the farm where I was born and later, in the house I grew up on Chute Road, , down in the cool dirt-floored cellar, there was always a big crock filled with salt brine and pieces of pork, weighed down with a big plate and bricks on top. Every Saturday morning, one of us children would get the task of reaching down into that cold container and retrieving a nice, white chunk of pork for the Saturday night baked beans.

Times have changed.

Kay Soldier welcomes reader ideas for column topics of interest to seniors. She can be reached by email at kso48@aol.com, or write to 114 Tandberg Trail, Windham, ME 04062.