It’s a four-pots-of-beans kind of day . . .
If you read about food, you probably know about the Rancho Gordo Bean Club: four times a year, members receive a box of six pounds of beans, plus a sheet of recipes (one for each type of bean), plus something extra, plus a code for free shipping for one order from Rancho Gordo. The November box always has a calendar, popping corn, and black-eyed peas, but otherwise the “extra” thing could be a container of some kind of spice, or some grain, or a bean that they don’t have in large enough quantities to sell on the website. They don’t say ahead of time what beans will be in the box, so it’s actually a surprise package (and there are few enough good surprises left in the world). All in all, for someone like me who eats beans at least four days a week most weeks, it’s truly wonderful.
I have two pots that are suitable for making beans, a stockpot-type pot (which is actually too small to use for a major production of stock) and a 6-quart sauté pan; when I’m going to make beans, I get both of those going, make two pots of beans, and, when they’re done, make two MORE pots of beans, without even bothering to wash the pots between batches. I end up with 46-48 meals’ worth of beans. I also have a million small plastic containers that originally housed fresh mozzarella from the farmers’ market, so I can portion the beans, Sharpie the type of bean on the lid, and freeze them, not to mention track them on the whiteboard.
So how do I eat so many beans? The dinner version is beans, greens (spinach, chard, or kale, depending on the CSA season), some other vegetable (roasted tomatoes; roasted squash; roasted sweet potatoes; carrots; beets), and a grain (barley, bulgar, farro, wild rice), with cheese on top. When I’m feeling especially adventurous, I’ll toss in a spice mix from Penzey’s. I also throw them into any stew-like dish I’m making, such as last week’s turkey pot pie—I had two containers of pintos that had been in the freezer forever. If I make fish tacos, I’ll heat up and then sorta mash some beans.
I’ve been a member of the bean club for at least five years, I think—maybe more—and it continues to be one of my favorite things. I’ve learned about more varieties of beans than I even knew existed, and I get to support a purveyor who searches out heirloom (rather than commodity) types of beans. Apparently, when Steve Sando first started looking for farmers to grow his beans, they thought he wanted the commodity beans; he said, no, I want the beans your grandmother grows. Today’s beans are Borlotti Lamon, buckeye, garbanzo, and royal corona (essentially, huge white limas); I’ll probably make some pasta e fagioli with some of the Borlottis and a curry of some kind with some of the the garbanzos, but most of both batches will be dinner.
I also started saving a bean from each batch and planting it, with no expectations—shockingly, they grew, even on my windowsill, even in winter, when it’s light for about 15 minutes a day. The biggest challenge indoors was the varieties that are pole beans rather than bush beans—they climbed my blinds and anything else they could find. And I’ve harvested beans, as well, which is even more entertaining. (When I have enough, I’m going to make a batch that consists of only the beans I’ve grown.) Now that winter is here I have to figure out where to plant the little pile of beans I’ve saved, preferably in a place where they can climb something other than my blinds. They didn’t do well on the back porch this summer (not enough light, perhaps).
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