Category Archives: beans

A Day in the Slow Life

Posted on October 21, 2010 | 10 Comments

Annette at Sustainable Eats (a truly inspiring woman with very interesting blog) tagged me in a meme that asks participants to share a day in their slow lives. I have to say, from what I’ve read so far, most of the “slow life” folks have pretty busy days.

In an effort to get this posted in time for Simple Lives Thursday, I’m going to try to recollect this past Monday. The days sometimes seem to run together. There’s always so much I’d like to do, and then there’s what can reasonably be accomplished (at least by me, an individual who requires sleep).

6:00 am-ish – Hubby gets up to shower and head out for two hour drive to work. Since having to take a job out of town last year, he now comes home on weekends and stays in a small condo near work during the week. It’s been tough being apart, but for now a lot of things are still up in the air and we’re hoping to hang on to our current home (our “dream house” built on 35 acres in the country back in 2005). I say a little prayer each day that eventually he’ll be able to find a job back in the area.

While hubby is in the shower, I gather the trash and recyclables for him to drop at the end of the driveway on his way out (we have a really long driveway), and pack some food stuffs for him to take to the condo (this week it’s homemade gluten free vanilla cookies).

6:30 – Hubby is gone. Eat a tablespoon of coconut oil. Put on exercise shoes and do about a half hour of aerobics followed by 15 minutes or so of stretching.

Minipig (left) and Snap

7:15 – Feed inside and outside cats. Put away dishes left to dry from previous night. I usually do dishes/run the dishwasher in the evening and let things air dry overnight. Went downstairs to go out to the garden to grab some kale for breakfast (we have a walk out basement and the basement patio door is the closest one to the garden), got sidetracked cleaning up the basement. I have an eight foot folding table down there that was covered with four types of shell beans, melons, seed heads, tomato ties, clippers…uh…well, it was a mess. We’re talking with some homeschool friends about blowing things up down there instead, so I had to make room. Melons to the counter (there’s a kitchenette), beans upstairs to be shelled, seed heads upstairs, tie bands to the laundry room, clippers to their storage bin, etc. Grab a gallon bucket of walnuts from where they’re curing in the greenhouse and take them upstairs to shell, too. Go back down and outside to finally grab the kale I’d forgotten earlier.

8:15 – Dice up kale and throw it in a pan with some organic butter and the last of the cherry tomatoes. Usually I have tomatoes that store a little later, but I got hit with late blight at the end of the season and my remaining tomatoes did not keep as well as usual. Once the kale is tender, shove veggies to the side of the pan and throw in a small duck egg from the neighbors. Cover and cook a few minutes for sunny side up, then dump the whole mess on a plate and add a little bruschetta for extra kick. Boot up the computer and munch breakfast with a side of Toffee Apple kombucha (kombucha w/ apple cider and a little English Toffee liquid stevia).

8:45 – Boys awake (yes, they are night owls). Get them some breakfast (bagel with cream cheese and coconut oil (not homemade), peanut butter and strawberry rhubarb jelly sandwich (all homemade), apple slices on the side. Let them play a while and munch breakfast, have them sort the laundry. Get the laundry going, pay some bills, catch up on email, do some research.

10:00 – Get the boys started on bookwork for the day. We homeschool, but we keep a pretty relaxed schedule. Dunc starts working on adding and subtracting decimals, August on algebra. Hang up the laundry on the line and start the next load. It’s a sunny day, so even though it’s cooler the laundry should be almost dry by evening. We’ve got a porch that runs along the south side of our home and acts as an overhang for the passive solar aspect of the home, and I’ve got my laundry line right on the porch so it’s very convenient.

11:00am – The boys shift to handwriting, grammar, and vocabulary. I hang up the second load of laundry, and help out as needed. I put some milk kefir and chia seeds in the Vitamix to soak in preparation of making a green smoothie for lunch. Start another batch of milk kefir.

Noon – Lunch time. The boys put on a special about earthquakes to watch while they munch. I make up some toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for them (they’re not big on green smoothies, but I keep trying). For myself, I raid the fridge and freezer – green beans, cucumbers, dried coconut, nutritional yeast, Superior Reds powder, blueberries, strawberries, banana, peach (last four all frozen) – everything goes into the Vitamix. Turn up the power and I’ve got a smoothie. I pair this up with a few slices of raw cheese and Nuthins, and that’s lunch.

1:00 pm – Science time. We’re studying geology right now. We read a section about ocean vents, and then watch some cool footage on YouTube. I love the internet.

2:00 – The weather is nice, so we’ve got to make some progress in the garden today. The boys work on pulling the last of the tomato trellis parts, and I work on cleaning the pathways around my center wagon wheel shaped permanent beds. The herbs and weeds went a little nuts this year with all the rain, and the garden got rather overgrown. The center-most herb bed is still a thicket, but at least now the paths are walkable. We start putting down cardboard, old newspaper and bird food bags to block the weeds, covered by wheat straw. We manage to get about half of the paths done. The bean plants are clipped back, a few more stray dry beans are found.

This year we had Calypso, Bumblebee, Tiger Eye for dried beans, and Emerite pole beans for green beans. I brace up the cilantro plants, hoping that more of the seeds will ripen yet this season. We’ve had a light frost, but the plants survived. I grab a dill weed seed head, and take that inside to save, too. We have cabbage, kale, and Swiss chard ready to harvest. We’ve been digging up carrots and sunchokes as we need them, but will dig up the remainder of the carrots before the ground freezes. We eat some sunchokes, but the patch produces way more than we care to eat now. The parsnips will stay in the ground over winter. There’s still celery and parsley, too. I’ll dig those up and move them into the greenhouse soon. The green beans are still alive, and I grab about a gallon of beans to eat.

Kefir brewing

5:00 pm – We head inside. The boys crack some walnuts and grab the laundry off the line while I cook supper (and eat a tablespoon of coconut oil). Tonight’s special is modified breakfast leftovers – tomorrow I cook “for real” again. We’ve got diced and reheated breakfast sausage from the little meat place down the road with scrambled duck eggs from the neighbors and a side of the green beans I picked earlier. The boys are drinking local apple cider and I’ve got some heavily fermented raspberry lemonade water kefir. This bottle was forgotten in the basement fridge for about a month and has a heck of a head on it. Thus far I prefer my water kefir flavored with citrus (lemon-lime, raspberry lemonade). The boys will drink root beer flavored (I currently use extract, but did recently buy some roots to experiment with). I want to experiment with hibiscus and other herbs, too. That’s what winters are for.

Nutcracker boys

6:00 – Sneak in a dry brush and shower (with hot/cold rinses at the end – I’m working on detoxing). I’ve got some lovely vanilla mint soap I made with a friend, and I use coconut oil to clean my face. Sort laundry, do the dishes, tackle the rest of the stacked up mound of paperwork (more bill paying, balance bank statement), more email, visit with friends. The boys like to play online games. We are all in one room together, so I can keep tabs on what they’re up to.

9:00 pm – Head the boys off to their showers and bedtime prep. Somewhere between 9:30 and 10, we all pile into my bed and read some history. This week we’re covering the 1900′s, and that night was about President Roosevelt.

10 – ish – The boys head off to their beds and I get a little reading done. I’m working my way through a new whole foods cookbook, but I’ve been a little disappointed. Way too much soy, no soaking or sprouting of grains (although it is gluten free, which is why I bought it in the first place), no soaking their nuts to reduce phytates, and heavy use of spices (I know they’re good for you, but our palates are just not into overly spiced food). Fat use is minimal – I like my fats, and they like me. Lots of use of fresh fruits and veggies that are not available in my area for much of the year. Very little fermenting – a couple of sauerkraut recipes. Sigh. I guess I just keep assembling recipes off the internet. A big thanks to all my real food blogger friends who share their awesome recipes (and the problems they’ve run into .

10:30 or so – I use some coconut oil I keep by the bed to coat my feet and hands. They get so dry in the cooler months. Another goal I have for this fall is to make a couple more dry skin salves to try out. I want to make one with burdock root (we have a TON of it around here) and one with hibiscus flowers (I found a recipe online and the flowers were on sale recently through Frontier). Lights out.

And now I’m tagging Pamela of Seeds of Nutrition, Paula of The Chicken Coop (see, this is what you two get for chatting with me regularly on Facebook) and YOU! I’d love to read all of your “day in the slow life” posts in this Thursday’s Simple Lives. Please consider it – we all learn so much from each other.

→ 10 Comments

Posted in "just for fun", "perennial vegetables", beans, boys, carrots, cooking, Gardening, harvest, homeschooling, inspiration, kombucha, local food, mulch, real food, root vegetables

Autumn Jewels and Musical Fruit

Posted on October 27, 2009 | 6 Comments

The boys and I continue working on cleaning up the garden and prepping food for winter storage. One of my recent additions to the mix is shell beans, which have to be one of the easiest storage crops available. Simply let the beans mature and dry on the vine, gather the dried pods, shell and store in an airtight container in a cool, dry location. That’s it. Even little boys can do it.

You can use the same method to save beans for seed. Beans tend to be self-fertile, which means they don’t easily cross breed. This means you can grow more than one variety in your garden and still keep the seed pure, as long as they are separated from each other. I try to separate mine by at least six feet and put heavily flowering plants (like borage) between varieties so the bees are even less likely to spread pollen between bean varieties.

This year I grew Tiger Eye, Calypso, Emerite and Purple Podded Pole beans. Tiger Eyes are great for baked beans. They have a velvety, almost buttery texture. The Calypso beans (shown at the top of the post) were given to me by a friend of the family and this is the first year I have enough to eat, so I will have to try them in a couple of different recipes. The boys call them “cow beans” because of their bright black and white pattern. The Emerite and Purple Podded pole beans are eaten as snap beans. I save seed from each of them to replant each year. In our area I have found that my varieties need a full season to mature, so I set aside a number of plants (for instance, one end of a double row) that I mark and do not harvest from during the season which are grown solely for seed propagation. Emerite is a very productive green podded pole bean. Its seeds are black. Purple Podded Pole Beans are exactly that, but they turn green when cooked. Their seeds are tan.

Here’s a line up of the pantry stash before this years’ harvest. From left to right: Tiger Eye, Scarlet Beauty Elite, Red and White, Polish (these were brought over from Poland by the seed saver friend’s grandmother), Applebee and Pink Kidney.

I wish my camera could do them justice. They come is such a vibrant array of colors, with the shine and feel of polished glass. The boys and I enjoy simply running our fingers through them.

The Tiger Eye beans were purchased from Fedco Seeds, all the others were shared with me.

To use my shell beans, I generally soak them overnight with a little cider vinegar. From wonderfulingredients.com:

The acid medium (vinegar,whey) helps to neutralize the enzyme inhibitors (phytates), making beans and grains more digestible and nutrient-dense.

WonderfulIngredients also provides a soaking chart at the above URL for various types of beans and grains. My measurements tend to be a little more informal – eye it up and pour, let it soak overnight. Soaking also reduces cooking time and may reduce flatulence.

What are phytates and why should I care what they are or want to remove them?

I found a great discussion of this on Live Fit Blog:

Phytates are the salts of phytic acid. More correctly named inositol hexakisphosphate, the acid (or salt) is a phosphorus based compound found in the many plants. Specifically those high in fiber, with concentrations generally being highest in foods containing large amounts of insoluble fiber. Occurring most frequently in nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains, phytates serve as the primary mechanism by which plants store phosphorus. Like so many other things in life, there is some debate about the health effects of phytates. Detractors claim they exhibit an anti-nutrient effect, while promoters tout their potential for reducing a variety of ills.

Phytates As Anti-Nutrients

For quite some time, phytates have been viewed as “anti-nutrients.” Since non-ruminant animals (i.e. humans) lack the proper enzymes to digest phytates, the phosphorus in these molecules is generally not available (for nutritional purposes) to humans. This means that consuming foods high in phytates will not serve to meet daily requirements for phosphorus.
From a nutritional perspective, phytic acid is known to strongly complex many cations, and when in the presence of these nutrients, the acid reacts to form a salt, known as a phytate. Included in that list are minerals that will complex with phytic acid are: calcium, magnesium, zinc, and iron. This means that phytic acid will scavenge these minerals, reducing their availability to serve nutritional needs, which concerns some nutritional experts, as it presents the potential for nutritional deficiencies. From a practical perspective, this has the greatest potential to impact vegetarians, pregnant women, and the extremely malnourished, due their generally low mineral consumption.

Nutritional Benefits of Phytates

On the flip side of this argument, since phytates are found in high fiber foods, it is thought that they may possess strong cancer suppressing activity as well. High fiber foods have shown protective benefits against a wide variety of cancers. In addition, phytates have shown some ability to suppress free radicals in the body. Some experts have suggested that the ability to complex iron may be the root of their function in this capacity.
Other suspected benefits of phytates include:

Protective benefits against osteoporosis

Protection from Parkinson’s disease

Reduce inflammation in the body

Reduce oxidative stress on the digestive tract

Reduce depression

Slows blood glucose response by slowing digestion

I think I’d just as soon get those extra minerals out of what I’m eating, so I soak. As another interesting aside, if you visit Rebuild from Depression, the author is very much in favor of reducing phytate consumption to assist with recovery from depression. On her website she gives a pretty exhaustive breakdown of various methods of reducing phytates and their effectiveness. Her conclusion is a long soak in hot water because she prefers the flavor. With what I’ve been cooking, I really don’t notice a difference.

Here are a couple of my favorite bean recipes.

Boston Baked Beans

INGREDIENTS:
• 1 lb. dried pinto or navy beans
• ½ lb. bacon (about 12 slices)
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 3 tablespoons molasses
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup ketchup
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• ½ cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 ½ tablespoons minced garlic or 1 teaspoon garlic powder

PREPARATION:
Place dried beans in a large bowl and add enough water to cover by 2-3 inches (about 8 cups). Let the beans soak overnight.

Drain and rinse the beans. Simmer beans in 8 cups of water and 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar until tender, about 1 to 2 hours.

Drain and set aside, reserving 2 cups of the cooking liquid.

Preheat oven to 350° F. Using a large, heavy pot or Dutch oven, cook the bacon until crisp, 7 or 8 minutes. Add the beans and all other remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Add some of the cooking liquid if the mixture is too thick.

Transfer pot to oven. Bake uncovered for 2-3 hours (or to desired thickness) until the beans are tender, stirring occasionally.

Makes 6-8 servings.

Bean Soup with Ham

INGREDIENTS:

1 ham bone with some meat left on, or two-three ham hocks

1 tbsp vinegar

2 cups Navy, Northern beans or mixed beans (I used Polish beans)

8 cups water

2 cloves garlic,whole or minced

2 bay leaves

small handful of parsley

1 large onion, chopped

Salt and pepper, to taste

2-3 carrots, sliced

2-3 medium potatoes, cubed

DIRECTIONS:
Soak beans overnight in warm water or water and vinegar. Put bones and other ingredients except carrots in pot and simmer on low for at least four hours. I prefer all day (my goal here is to get get as much calcium, gelatin and other nutrients out of the bones as possible). Add additional water as needed.

About an hour before serving, remove bones and pick off meat, return meat to pot. Remove parsley stems. If you want a meatier soup, you can add a little extra ham at this point. Add carrots and potatoes and cook soup until tender. Remove bay leaf before serving.

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival.

→ 6 Comments

Posted in beans, cooking, food storage, fruit and vegetable storage, Gardening, harvest, local food, real food, Recipes, seeds

Beanie Goodness – Wrapping up the Season

Posted on September 7, 2009 | 1 Comment

Canned green beans are one of the boys’ favorite veggies, so I try to can up about thirty quarts each season. Luckily this year I’ll be able to get some from my mom, as my beans got attacked by flea beetles, and between that and the cooler weather they just did not produce very heavily. I’ve ended with eight quarts from my garden. The vines are still producing, but the output has slowed to a trickle, just enough for a meal now and then.

Out last round of “green” beans actually started out mostly as Purple Podded Pole Beans. I prefer pole beans because there is less bending and they produce over a longer season.

The beans get dumped on the table.

Off come the ends and they get snapped into bite size pieces. Into a cold water rinse – it’s amazing how much grime washes off.

Meanwhile, three quarts of boiling water and a tablespoon of white vinegar into the pressure canner, several quarts of hot water to cover the beans, and lids heating up on “low” on the back burner. Tongs, ladle, hotpads, clothes, chopstick, canning salt (no iodine – it will darken the beans) – get everything ready before you start because you want to move as fast as possible once you start packing. I wash the jars in the dishwasher and keep them hot.

I prefer the cold pack method because it keeps the beans firmer. Take the washed beans and pack them into jars, adding one teaspoon salt in each jar. Shake them down/pack them in as you go. Allow one inch headspace.

Fill jar with boiling water.

Wipe the edge of the jar with a clean, dry cloth so you get a good seal.

Screw on two piece lid and tighten until snug.

Process quarts at 11 pounds pressure for 25 minutes, pints at 20 minutes at 11 pounds pressure. (See PickYourOwn.org for altitude adjustments.) When done, allow the pressure canner to cool down and release the pressure on its own. Don’t bleed off the pressure or place cold rags on it or anything else, unless you want a big mess. Once the pressure has dropped to zero and the little pressure button has released, carefully open and unload the canner. Place the jars on a towel and leave them undisturbed for around eight hours.

The purple beans cook up green, but they are a little darker than regular green beans. The lids should be pulled down tight. If you can pop the lids up and down it did not seal properly and those beans should be refrigerated and eaten, not stored. Remove the rings (if you leave them on they tend to rust), label and store in a cool, dark place. Enjoy your garden or farm market goodness year round.

This post has been add to Preparedness Challenge #21 at Homestead Revival.