The Beans are Swirling in the Cyber-Soup

This post started as several different Facebook conversations about dry beans. Three or four different people in as many different threads all seemed to be talking about beans.

When it hits you from several directions all at once, you better act on it. So I made a batch,

and this is my cyber-trail into the world of beans. In the photo you can see re-used jars on the left. They do actually work for canning as long as they have the center pop-up button and no scratches or dents in the sealing ring. If you don't trust them for canning, use these for freezing. They are cheaper and safer than plastic and it's just good common sense.

It all started with a comment thread about this link:
http://www.good.is/post/a-new-kind-of-cornerstore-makeover/
The link basically talked about using neighborhood corner stores as drop off spots for CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture.)
Our FB comment thread can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=feed&story_fbid=294885978652&id=1184454788&ref=mf

Bill Martin then offered up this link on cost of food vs. feeding on the cheap:
http://www.cookforgood.com One of the primary points of this site is to cook staples a week in advance, with beans being a top staple to rely on.
The site is very interesting and offers recipes and shopping lists to prepare enough food once a week to cover the basic meals for the full week. Using her method saves money in the grocery and eating out, saves time, and provides health benefits. The site has the first month's info free but also promotes subscription into the service. Definitely worth checking out for the free recipes and shopping lists.

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So I posted the link on my Facebook wall and Mary Lou tossed some insight my way:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=feed&story_fbid=296303328798&id=1184454788&ref=mf Mary Lou Chadbourne Rhodes printed several recipes from this site.... anxious to make the hummus. It is different than the one I make. Also going to put a bit of tahini into my oatmeal this a.m. BTW...I toast my old fashioned cut oats before I cook them... much nuttier flavor. Perry Jerome Post This site is from an old Navy buddy Bill Martin. This site is a hit Bill, thanks! Love the toasted oatmeal idea. Perry Jerome Post The funny thing, Mary Lou, is that I was down in my pantry yesterday looking at the cans of beans wondering if there was a better way to keep beans on hand instead of in cans with the carcinogenic BPA coatings. It's almost as though Bill could read my psychic ponderings from across the country. I love this site! Mary Lou Chadbourne Rhodes perry....can your own beans......I do Perry Jerome Post Biggest question I have about beans is do you have to cook them before canning or do you can them straight from the dry stage? Seems like if you cooked them first they would get really mushy in the canning and alternately if you can them from the dry would they absorb too much of the water and rupture the jar? Can you give me a quick how-to on what you do? Thanks Perry Jerome Post Thanks Mary Lou http://www.recipezaar.com/Home-Canned-Dry-Beans-137224 :-) Esmaa Self I cook up big batches of beans and freeze them in glass jars. Works well. Bill Martin Hey Perry, glad you are diggin' that site :) We *try* to live on the cheap, but food costs are my undoing. I like to eat out too much, but having some balance at home helps. Perry Jerome Post Mary Lou, I tried canning some beans last night. Opened one today for lunch, the Adzuki kind, and they seemed a bit mushy. Maybe I pressure cooked them too long, don't know. Perfect for making refried beans tho! Found this bean chart too, fyi: http://www.dietbites.com/Diet-2/beans-calories-nutrition-info.html

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Then, out of pure chance, I discover this link over at Esmaa Self's blog, Es*sense.
Tasty Low Fat Refritos
http://esmaa.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/tasty-low-fat-refritos/

Yummy!! ...repost! I put it on my FB wall:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=feed&story_fbid=272869613365&id=1184454788&ref=mf
Esmaa offers the following commentary on cumin:

January 28 at 11:48am Jonell Galloway-White likes this. Mary Lou Chadbourne Rhodes really loved this page...bookmarked it for future reference Esmaa Self Thanks! I'm glad you both found it! Cumin is a great spice and has rumored health benefits. http://www.vegetarian-nutrition.info/herbs/cumin.php I say rumored, though I believe there has been a study in the last two years that proved the cancer protecting aspects of this spice. I just couldn't find that story in three seconds. ;) If you do make refritos, do yourself a favor and use the avocado leaves for an unbelievable flavor enhancement!

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Wow, avocado leaves? Have to try that some day!

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So then, wouldn't you know it, black beans jump up into my radar yet again, this time in Linda Higgins's FB wall in this status update:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=feed&story_fbid=270923078761&id=746563835&ref=mf Perry Jerome Post Linda, may I offer the suggestion of using frozen veggies for your chicken-veggie-black bean soup instead of canned? Cans are lined with a BPA releasing plastic coating. Canned tomato and canned bean products are reportedly some of the worst. Just think 'breast cancer' every time you are opening a can of food. http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/the-7-foods-experts-wont-eat-547963/ http://www.ewg.org/reports/bisphenola+ Linda Higgins Thanks for the reminder, Perry. I use frozen veggies and then add veggies that aren't in the mix. I won't buy mixes with broccoli, for example, since I hate it, so the mixes I find sometimes don't have corn, which I love, being a corn-fed Iowa farm girl. And frankly, who has time to soak beans? I use canned for ease. What do you suggest for tomatoes if not canned? Perhaps home canned? See question above. Perry Jerome Post Hello Linda. It really boils down to planning. If you devote a few hours one weekend or evening you can stock-pile beans with little effort instead of being inhibited by the thought of soaking them when you need them. Same with tomatoes. Devote an entire weekend in the fall to process a few 5 gallon buckets worth of toms from friends overflow and you'll be set until next fall. If you are not into home canning, both beans and toms can easily be frozen. BEANS: Who has time to soak beans? I was part of that mind-set too, but last weekend I gave it a try. I didn't soak them, just brought them to a boil and simmered for another 1/2 to 1 hour. I had to keep adding water. They were then rinsed and dumped into pint canning jars and pressure cooked for 1hr+ at 10 to 15 lbs. (You could just store them in the refrigerator for use that week or in the freezer in re-used glass jars for later use.) Emma Joy eating a Vietnamese black bean and shredded mozzarella roll-up. She just came out of a serious melt-down because I made them into refried beans and she wanted them as whole beans. That is why her eyes are puffy and why the middle jar is open in the previous photo! Kid knows what she likes. :-) 1 lb of dry black beans or adzuki beans yields 7 +/- pint jars for about 2 hours of passive work (mostly waiting for cooking times to finish.) We ate refried beans, chili, and black beans wrapped in tortilla with shredded mozzarella scattered about all last week and only used up 2 1/2 jars of the 10 jars we made. Timewise, the yield is huge in terms of how long it takes to eat that many beans compared to the small time commitment to make them. It really is extremely easy to get ahead this way. *************************** TOMATOES: The very easiest is to stock up in the fall, run them through the blender and freeze them in easy to use container sizes. Use glass jars to freeze them, not tupper/rubber/ziploc type plastic containers. Re-used jelly, olive, pickle jars work great for this application. Just make sure to leave plenty of head-room below the shoulder of the jar so the expanding liquid doesn't rupture the glass. This frozen tomato mush is great for making sauces. We've found that draining the blended tomato through paper towels in a colander as it thaws helps reduce the heavy liquid content and extra acidity. (Also add shredded carrots to your homemade sauce instead of sugar to help cut the acid.) This past fall (2009) a buddy had grown too many tomatoes and they were starting to rot faster than he could process them. We took several buckets full and simply rinsed them clean, pared off any rot spots, and processed them directly into jars, skins and all. We didn't core, blanch, skin or any of that other time consuming stuff before canning these tomatoes (whole and blender processed.) We did the romas and cherries this way, and the big juicy kind we blended first for sauce base. We ended up with 30+ jars of whole tomatoes and sauce base. 30 quart jars and not one of them was from our garden! It has been 5 months since we last bought a canned tomato product and still have 1/2 of our reserves left. Definitely worth a full weekend of work. Put word out towards the end of summer and people will gladly let you have bucket-loads of tomatoes. Tomato paste is a bit trickier, but if you search you can find it online in jars, but it is expensive. What normally costs $0.60 in the grocery runs about $2.75 for organic in jars with shipping. In all reality, we have discovered that there are very few recipes in which we absolutely have to have the paste, so we just do without and don't even miss it.

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Extra info:
Growing Black Beans and Black Beans & Rice recipe:
https://www.learn2grow.com/gardeningguides/edibles/vegetables/BlackBeanFiesta.aspx

Nutrition Chart by Variety of Bean:
http://www.dietbites.com/Diet-2/beans-calories-nutrition-info.html

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So there you have it, the beans are swirling in the cyber-soup!

(...with a side of tomatoes.)

Please comment and share your ideas or suggestions. Thanks.

Glimpsing the Apocalypse

Do you wonder how the Monsantos and AIG's of the world plow through all in their path, seemingly above the law, above governments, above any human institution that might try to slow them down? Richard Bruce Anderson proposes an interesting scenario where he likens non-human entities (corporations) to legendary, mythological characters like Zeus or Hercules. These modern day gods operate not to fulfill mortal needs, but rather to create new needs with which to further entrance the mortals. They are governed by only one internal corporate law, unimpeded by morality or human consciousness, to maximize profits, measured in growth, regardless of consequence.



Glimpsing the Apocalypse
by Richard Bruce Anderson

Excerpt:

"...We live in a mythical era, a time that surpasses legend. We’re witnessing a dazzling triumph of technology, an archetypal summoning of powers that are indistinguishable from true magic. But that triumph is hollow and destructive to much of what we value. The more we humans use our powers to impose order on the world, the more disorder there is. There are wars, and premonitory shadows of wars to come, as the world economy becomes ever more leveraged and dependent on scarce and finite resources. In the background there’s a steady slippage toward irreversible climate change and ecological collapse. And the astounding material success of the human endeavor hasn’t brought happiness, wisdom or enlightenment; instead there’s a profound disturbance in our collective human psyche. The best evidence of that disturbance is to be found in our suicidal abuse of nature, but we can also see its effects in the narcissism and desperation that are endemic in our society. Something is wrong at a very fundamental level – something that’s causing us to behave maladaptively.

What could have caused this imbalance? Given our brilliance and our accomplishments, what makes us behave so stupidly? Our innate human failings, our pride and greed and narcissism, must have a major part in it. But that’s not necessarily the whole story. In addition to human nature there’s another causal force at work, a force that we ourselves created: the industrial machine.

We humans have organized our economic affairs in a variety of ways in the past, but the way we make our living now is new in human history. Over the past five decades we’ve created an economy based on ever-increasing consumption, an economy that does not simply satisfy needs, but sets out to create them. We’ve left necessity and restraint behind to enter a world in which gross excess is the norm. This way of organizing life originated in the United States, but it’s spreading rapidly all over the world. It’s the principal threat to the natural world that sustains us and to the health of our culture our minds and our souls.

A self-organizing system, the consumer economy is a force all its own, an entity separate from ourselves. We built it, but we don’t control it. As the Dalai Lama remarked in Ethics for the New Millennium, “Modern industrial society often strikes me as being like a huge self-propelled machine. Instead of human beings in charge, each individual is a tiny, insignificant component with no choice but to move when the machine moves.” The machine operates by its own rules, rules that only indirectly involve humans...."

Link to full article:
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/87/richard_bruce_anderson.html

It’s a Great Year to Grow Organic Corn!

"...Maybe you read the Huffington Post article highlighting the seemingly inexhaustible connections Monsanto Corporation has with the Obama administration. Perhaps you’ve seen the USDA Web site that details the levels of bio-tech (GMO) corn that’s been planted in the US.

The statistics are sobering to the point of stagger...


...How can you limit your exposure to GMOs if there is no labeling law? You could buy the 2010 Non-GMO Sourcebook. Another thing you can do is order organic corn from a trusted seed seller like the Seed Savers Exchange and grow your own.
Corn is easy to grow..."
Read the whole article at the Es*sense blog:
It’s a Great Year to Grow Organic Corn!


Important links in the full article:
Monsanto's inexhaustible connections to the Obama administration
USDA Overview: Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops in the U.S.
Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure
Argentina approves new Syngenta GMO corn strain
Order The Non-GMO Sourcebook
Seed Savers Exchange
Abundant Life Seeds
Seeds of Change
How to Grow Sweet Corn, Popcorn and Indian Corn
Loving the Grind: how to make your own cornmeal

Sustainable Energy: Thermal Banking Greenhouse Design

"...At Minnesota’s latitude, farmers who can extend their growing season have a distinct advantage in the marketplace: By offering a product outside the “normal” growing season, they can receive a higher price. That’s what Schwen has done with his greenhouse vegetable production, starting earlier in the year with seedlings of warm-season vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, basil and peppers), and continuing production into the fall and even the winter months when he grows cold-tolerant crops such as salad mix, cilantro, scallions and carrots. Season extension is a common enough practice, but what makes Schwen’s operation so unique is the added innovation of thermal banking, which significantly reduces the energy costs of running a greenhouse for cold-season production. Schwen’s simple description of thermal banking is that it’s like a savings account: Instead of money, you save (or store) energy for future use. In this case we are talking about the heat that accumulates in a greenhouse during the daytime, especially on sunny days..."



Watch the video (with .pdf plans) on the thermal banking techniques used in this greenhouse. Sustainable Energy: Thermal Banking Greenhouse Design at Cooking Up A Story.