Save Money: Dry Beans vs. Canned

In recent years I have come to appreciate homemade beans cooked from scratch. Beans are high-protein, high-fiber, inexpensive, and nutritious. Canned beans are convenient, but they are relatively pricey and often high in sodium compared to dry beans. There are an amazing array of varieties of dried beans to try, too. While cooking dry beans saves money, it takes a little planning. There are several options, but most cooks start with step 1:

Step 1: Pre-soak the beans. About 8-12 hours before you plan to cook the dry beans, put them in a colander, inspect, and rinse them. "Inspect" mostly means to check them over to be sure there are no pebbles mixed in with the beans. Any funny-looking beans can also be thrown away at this point. Put the rinsed beans in a large bowl or pot and cover with lots of water. Put the bowl in the refrigerator and allow the beans to soak.

 I put beans in to soak before going to work in the morning if I plan to cook them for supper. I'll soak them overnight if I plan to start cooking them in the morning. If pre-soaking beans seems like too much time or trouble, you will need to use a pressure cooker to make your beans. Go to "Option C," below.

Step 2: Drain the beans in the colander again and rinse them again. Discarding the soaking water is important because you will discard most of the sugars that make the beans "gassy" when you discard the soaking water. Now the beans are ready to cook, and at this point you have choices for Step 3:

Option A: Cook the beans. Put them in a large pot, cover with at least two or three inches of water and add one or two bay leaves. Bring to a boil. Then boil the beans, uncovered, until they are tender. How long this takes depends on the variety of beans and other factors. You'll need to research cooking times for the type of beans you are making, but the longest-cooking beans take up to 1 hour and 30 minutes to cook. Remove the bay leaves.

Option B: My favorite, and the reason I often start beans before work. Bring the beans to a boil as in "Option A," but only boil for 15 minutes. Transfer the contents to a slow-cooker and set the slow-cooker on low. Let the beans cook for several hours (about 8) or overnight. The advantage of the slow-cooker over the next method is that you can make more beans at once this way. Use some right away and store the rest in their own broth or soaked in water in the freezer to use later. The reason for boiling the beans before transferring to the slow-cooker is that some beans can be toxic if they are cooked insufficiently. The 15 minutes at a boil will ensure your beans won't make you or your family sick, so don't skip this step, even if it's a little more time and trouble. Remove the bay leaves.

Option C: The pressure cooker. Be sure to follow the directions on your pressure cooker. Do not overfill the pressure cooker. Generally you need to put a little oil in the water with the beans and the water to keep the beans from getting too frothy while in the cooker. Using a pressure cooker, you can cook pre-soaked beans in under 10 minutes and even cook unsoaked beans in under 30 minutes. If you choose not to presoak, I would discard the water the beans were cooked in and give them a good rinse to avoid a "gassy" product. Remove the bay leaves.

With pre-planning there is no reason to buy more expensive canned beans when you can cook up tasty, low-fat, low-sodium dry beans for your dinner. Use the cooked beans in chili, soups, salads, and all your favorite recipes in place of canned beans. One of my goals for my garden this summer is to grow some of my own beans to can or to dry for use next winter. Beans are not only good in your kitchen, they are good for your garden, too, because they help to fix nitrogen in the soil.

The Easiest Hard-Boiled Eggs

I used to like to buy fresh, free-range eggs from local farms. Now I have a few backyard hens that supply us with fresh eggs.

My main reason is to avoid the cruelty of supporting the raising laying hens in the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that produce the cheap eggs mostly found in big box stores. For more about this issue, visit http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/confinement_farm/ and a host of other websites. The details are hard to stomach.

But a side-benefit of eggs from free-range hens that eat grass and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air is that the eggs are healthier. Again, a quick search will find websites such as http://www.motherearthnews.com/Natural-Health/Health-Benefits-Free-Range-Eggs.aspx that explain that these eggs have a better nutritional content and less "bad" cholesterol than CAFO eggs. It just stands to reason that less-stressed hens that eat a better diet will produce a better product. Since there are no federal standards about what "free range" means, however, I prefer to buy from local farmers whose hens and coops I can see with my own eyes, to be sure they are being well cared for. These farmers will be proud to share their feeding and husbandry practices and obviously love their "girls."

Having said that, one doesn't want to go overboard with eating the egg yolks. One egg supplies on average almost a day's supply of cholesterol. And cardiac patients should follow their doctors' and nutritionists' advice about eating eggs. But for healthy individuals, whole eggs supply a terrific nutritional punch.

Enough of that! On to my favorite recipe for hard-boiled eggs! I purchased this Nordic Ware Egg Cooker:
http://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-64802-Microwave-Cooker/dp/B0007M2BN0

I am thrilled with the results. Since my free-range eggs are not USDA-graded, they come in all different sizes. I tend to pick the largest ones to make hard-boiled eggs. These eggs are HUGE compared to the eggs  bought in stores, so I added 1 minute to the microwave cooking time that come with the directions. These are the easiest eggs to peel I have ever made, too. If you like hard-boiled eggs and have a busy lifestyle, I heartily recommend this product.

Getting Started

When gas prices spiked to $4.00 per gallon a couple of summers ago, I started to ramp up my garden. I didn't even feel like I could afford to drive to the local Walmart, no less pay the rising prices for food. I've been reading  both online and in print about the local-foods movement, and I've been increasingly concerned about the effects of GMOs, pesticide use, and factory-farming on human health and the environment. So, like many others, I have tried my hand at gardening, and I like it. As a vegetarian, it makes sense, too, since I can grow most of what I need close to home. I subscribe to Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News. I've read Fast Food Nation, the Omnivore's Dilemma, and watched Food, Inc. I've really started focusing on improving soil with organic inputs.

This past summer was pretty successful. Most of my tomatoes thrived, I had as many garlic bulbs and shallot bulbs as I cared to eat, the herbs like mint and oregano did great, as did my basil. In early spring I grew peas; I even grew carrots successfully for the first time. I grew some "Corno del Toro" peppers in planters, and they were prolific producers. In fact, as I write this on November 14, one of the plants is flowering and producing more little peppers. I don't know if it will survive the coming frosts. I put it up next to the house against a wall. Butternut squash started as a "volunteer" in one of my flower beds, and I had enough squash to eat for weeks after harvest, although I disliked squishing all the squash-bugs that arrived along with the plants. My bush beans didn't fare as well, but they were an experiment.  Radishes, another experiment, did MUCH better, especially the heritage variety I bought at Monticello. The special connection with Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop garden was exciting to me, too.

I started some new flower beds using the "lasagna layering" technique and was happy with the results. It was a learning process, too. I learned, for example, that seeds don't compost well and tend to sprout... this is where my volunteer squash started, to my pleasant surprise. I had intended those beds to be fallow until fall.

I am starting this blog because I want to be better about recording exactly what I am doing in my gardens and when. I am in the process of moving, and so I am starting over with building garden beds, etc., in a new location. Yesterday my fiance and I visited a friend's farm and cleaned out their chicken coops. That farmer is always happy to see us, lol! I have a ComposTumbler, but it's getting too cool in the evenings to hot compost, so we are storing the manure mixed with wood shavings and shredded leaves in a couple of plastic garbage containers and in a flower bed underneath a large oak tree in front of the house, waiting for spring. That, some garlic bulbs I tucked into a flower bed in front of my house, and my potted containers with mint, etc., are all that I have of my old gardens, which I miss already.