Boil up some beans, cook up some cornbread, add a side of coleslaw and there you have it - a poor man's supper.

Some of these supper menus will even have cracklin' cornbread made with fried pork rind. Some have several types of relish, too, to add more flavor to the meal, along with pies and cobblers for dessert.

These dinners pop up occasionally at local churches, but the origin of the menu can be attributed to past generations.

"It goes back to the Grimm's fairy tale of rock, stone soup," said Liz Williams, president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans. "You are looking for calories and flavor, but you aren't necessarily going to get nutrition."

In the stone soup story, three men are able to get villagers to put together a soup starting with three stones in the pot. The villagers ask how the soup gets its flavor, and the men answer that the stones are good - but with the addition of a few vegetables, it might be better. Before long, the stones are removed to reveal a bubbling pot of vegetable stew.

The idea behind local poor man's suppers borrows from that theme, adding side dishes to a basic bean soup instead.

This weekend, Eastview Baptist Church and New Bridge Baptist Church are set to have poor man's suppers. Both churches' women's groups will prepare a selection of beans, cornbread and all the fixin's as church fundraisers.

Jane Fuller, treasurer and committee chairwoman for the New Bridge Baptist Church Good Neighbor Circle, said her church has been having the poor man's supper for about 30 years.

"They started out doing the cooking at home ... but now the cornbread and stuff is cooked at the church and there's different (people) that bring beans," said Fuller, who will prepare 6 pounds of great northern beans on Saturday morning. "I let them soak overnight. ... Then on Saturday morning I drain them and wash them and cook them. I put ham pieces in them and salt and that's it."

Fuller said she cooks her own poor man's supper at home from time to time.

"We have cornbread a good bit. ... I cook soup beans occasionally, maybe once a month."

Soup beans, the featured item of the poor man's supper, can be any type of bean, Fuller said. Williams said she thinks specifically of white beans, lima beans and black-eyed peas, while Velina White, president of the Eastview Baptist Church Women's Mission, prepares pinto beans at her church.

"Each woman will donate a pot of soup beans," said White, who cooks up 10 to 12 pounds herself. "Some people mix the pinto with the white, but I just use the pinto because that's what I like."

The process to make the beans is simple, she said.

"I wash 'em, soak 'em and cook them until they are done ... about two hours," Williams said, adding that for flavoring, "I use a little shortening and fatback."

Williams said the flavor is why certain items in the poor man's supper are spotlighted - the items are easily flavored for a nice meal.

"That's why people used to eat bacon grease sandwiches ... which when you are poor and are hungry and you're working hard, calories is the first thing you are looking for," Williams said. "But you can't live on just fat - but it fills you up and it does the trick. Plus, bacon fat tastes good."

Williams added that while the traditional bean pot for a poor man's supper might taste good, it doesn't hold up so well, nutritionally speaking.

"Even when you have enough calories to sustain you, you don't necessarily ... have sufficient nutrition in order to be healthy," she added.

But after bubbling in a pot for a while, the texture of the beans mixes well with the water, Williams said, and "one of the nice things about beans is they do fall apart and get thick and gives you that sense of .. this isn't water."

Fuller said the church will serve Southern condiments such as pickles, relishes and chopped onions to add more zest on some dishes.

"We have everything that goes with them. We have a relish table set up that has onions and all kinds of pickles and relishes," she said.

Plain cornbread and cornbread with cracklin's, also will be on the menu.

"The cracklin's are put in when they mix up the cornbread (which makes it crunchy). ... There's a lot of people that really like the cracklin' cornbread," Fuller said.

Fuller and White said the poor man's supper will benefit their churches in some way, from providing funds to the Gainesville Rescue Mission for New Bridge Baptist to needed church repairs for Eastview Baptist.

"It's good food and fellowship," Fuller said. "We have people that look forward to it and wonder why don't we have it more often."

White added, "But there's more to it than the money; it's a community thing and getting people together."