Baked Beans with Sausage & Apples

This is from Tiffany's adoption fundraiser cookbook. We love baked beans, and also we love smoked sausage. Baked beans, when you make them slow all day, make your kitchen smell great. Yankee Candle should totally do a Baked Beans one. The before, not the after, hee hee. Anyway a lot of times in cookbooks like these with multiple contributors, it can be hard to follow the recipe, because the person who submits it will not write down a step they just assume everyone will know, or that they know to do so well they don't even think to write it down. I am sure I am guilty of the same thing when I have submitted recipes in the past. So a couple of times in this one, I was like "what??" But a popular and oft-featured New Recipe Night consultant, my mom, told me what to do. So I will fill in her suggestions where appropriate.

Baked Beans with Sausage & Apples
1/4 lb dried kidney beans
1/4 lb dried pea beans
1/2 lb smoked sausage, cut into 1" slices and browned (I used a whole package because we really like it)
2 cups peeled, sliced apples
1 medium onion, sliced
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups tomato juice
1 tsp salt
1 garlic clove (which I minced)
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp pepper

Soak beans overnight (in a large amount of water in a Dutch oven). In the morning, simmer beans until tender (this will take about 1 1/2 hours...way longer than I expected). In a crock pot, combine all other ingredients except beans and sausage. Bring to a boil (in the crockpot?? I didn't do that) then mix with beans (do you drain them first? Yes, but mom says reserve the bean cooking water in case you need to add more liquid as they're cooking); add sausage. Cook 2 hours on high or 6 hours on low, adding more liquid if needed (the bean water). You can also bake these at 325 for 6 hours, adding liquid as needed.

These could be meatless if you left out the meat. That is the Captain Obvious sentence of the day. I made mine in the crock pot and didn't end up needing to add any extra liquid, but I'm sure if you made them in the oven you would have to. These came out great. Nathan didn't like it at all, but he still ate them. Everyone else liked them. The sauce turned out so so yummy and just a hint of sweetness. I gave some to my friend and she said it was delicious. So this is definitely something I'll make again, but definitely making a double batch next time, because they are all gone already, only one little serving left for leftovers.