Mommy's toolbox--beans, beans, beans!

Cheap food is cheap—full of all sorts of chemicals that our bodies can’t even recognize (and we can’t even pronounce), much less digest and use.

Economical nutrition, on the other hand, is food of another sort. It is taking basic, inexpensive ingredients full of God’s earthy goodness and using them to formulate dishes which are not only nutritious, but delicious!

I once heard that if inmates attempt a food fight in the prisoner’s mess, they are fed a “nutrition loaf” for their next meal(s). This loaf consists of all sorts of nutritious things—but it is horribly nasty looking and nasty tasting.

Beans are sort of like that “nutrition loaf” in most minds. Along with the stigma of being “po’ man’s food”, they are thought of as being bland or pasty, along with the “after affects” that can be embarrassing.

Facts are, beans have been the saving of lives in hard times. During the Great Depression our nation was full of vagrants traveling from one town to another in search of work. Oftentimes it would be a father, holes in the soles of his shoes from walking mile after mile, trying to find employment so he could send money back to his family. Sometimes whole families would travel together, mattress tied on the top of an old family car or truck. A friend of mine remembers families camping across the street from her house, gathering wild greens from the field to make some sort of soup to stave off their hunger. An observant, kind woman kept a pot of beans going and a picnic table in her back yard. Anyone going through her town could count on receiving a good meal of warm goodness—those beans must have tasted like filet mignon to those poor folks!

Beans can help the mother of many in our current times stretch her budget and bless the little bodies growing up in her home. They are so beneficial to one’s health it would take a book, or at least a website, to document them all. Here are a couple:

Bean Bible

Beans-bean recipes-bean facts

I buy my beans in bulk. Pintos come in huge bags almost anywhere, but I have been known to buy my other varieties from a health foods store—just call up and tell them you’d like a whole bag—they have catalogs from distributors and can order for you (work through the local mom and pop type of store)—these beans are organic, which is a plus. You can also buy the smaller bags at your local grocers—they are still a good “bang for the buck”!

Cooking the beans is not rocket science. It’s good to soak your beans all night, then poor off the water, add new water, and cook them in the crock pot. But I often forget, which is wonderful that they don’t have to be soaked—they just take a little longer to cook! I just put them straight in the crockpot (I don’t even boil them first) with lots of water and cook them on high all day (I might have to add a little water later on).

As for water, a good rule of thumb is to add 4 times the amount of beans. Don’t worry if you add too much or too little—just pay attention and adjust as needed.

Some folks like to add a bit of bacon, etc. for flavor—I never seem to get around to this.

Also, if you want soft beans, add a tiny bit of sugar, and if you want hard beans, add some salt—I don’t do either.

Don’t forget to drain them and rinse them, even if they are canned—this greatly reduces the amount of gas you and your family may experience.

Just plain beans and cornbread on a cold day are wonderful, but here are a few other easy things I like to do with beans:

--Butter bean soup—just cook butter beans and add salt—creamy and delicious with a little sandwich or side salad.

--Sautee onions, green and red peppers (I pre-dice these and freeze them in ziplocks so I can throw them in at anytime), add salt and pepper, and create these variations:

• Creole—add black-eyed peas, corn and diced tomatoes (cayenne pepper for the older set)
• Southwest—add pintos or black beans, chili powder, cumin
• Mid-Eastern—add curry powder and chicken broth powder, garbanzo beans, and any others bean varieties that suit you, serve over rice

For more on beans, try another article I have written here.