Beans

There is a scene in the 1950 movie, Cheaper by the Dozen, where all the kids go to the beach for the summer and all they can afford to eat is beans.Jeanne Crain gets invited to a barbecue where they are having steaks, it seems the beach neighbors have less kids and are rich. I felt sorry for Jeanne, her family was eating cans of beans, think of the fun they could have had making them from scratch!

My mother born in the late 20’s, serving in WWII as a Wave, was no stranger to beans. There were seven children in her family and she was the third youngest. She grew up eating hot soup to cool off in the summers in Detroit. She ate so much bean soup that she became a connoisseur of bean soup. In fact she was a decent cook, could not make a decent chicken soup but could not mess up bean soup.

  

   Grandma Florence 

It was a Navy bean or sometimes a green split pea thing she made. She also made a great chili, with beans. In some circles that is unheard of, of course I grew up thinking the meat was the extra thing. Beans and peas really are botanically classified as fruit.

When she retired and moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, she continued with the bean thing, one of her regular charitable acts was to donate huge bags of dried beans to the food pantry there. Did I mention my mother’s last name wasBien?

When my children were small, I took them out to see her. She took us to the local grocery store and my five year old son was enjoying looking at the beans. He told her that he loved black beans….I thought she was going to cry. She bought him a can and when we did not end up using it for a meal, she mailed it in a box to him, just in case he could not get a can of black beans where we lived.

Anyway, my cupboard is full of dried beans, canned beans and indeed, a virtual variety of beans. I regularly cook up bean things. I recently made some great white lima beans with diced chili’s and tomatoes. I just made a batch of homemade chili this week to die for with pinto beans in it. I then cooked up some black-eyed peas with turkey broth, onions and a big dash of lemon juice for dinner one night.

I don’t know if I am in love with the idea of the process, picking through the dried beans, rinsing them, soaking them for hours and watching them eat up the water, or finally simmering them into submission. In a pinch opening a can is just as fulfilling.

Turns out this food that some used when money was tight, is a pretty yummy gourmet option after all; part of the Mediterranean Diet, they take the place of meat rather easily and are healthy for you to eat.

Thanks, MOM.

Copyright 2010 SheilaTGTG55