Coming Out of the Closet

No-- not that way. But I'm coming out about the reason I've been cheerfully trying to make sure everyone I know understands how to cook dried beans. First, because I'm garralous, a helpful anecdote.

So there was this nurse I worked with in a job which shall remain nameless in case anyone at that hospital reads this blog someday. She was...abrasive. She didn't mean to be, I think, but gosh. Paint came off the walls when she walked into the room, but not because she charmed it off. Anyhow, this nurse revealed her vulnerable side once when asking how to make a dish that called for cornmeal. Was that the same thing that came in the Jiffy corn muffin mix? Noooo, said the nurses's lounge, after taking this in. That was corn muffin mix. Cornmeal came by itself in a bag, in the baking aisle, and made many things besides corn muffins. This, along with the fact that a girl I was at university with asked the class in all seriousness if anyone had a recipe for tuna salad, because she wanted to make it, made me understand a shocking thing about America:

Nobody knows how to cook. (Present company excepted... if I know you. If you are a random stranger, you might want to keep reading.) In normal circumstances this would be deplorable, but not actually dangerous unless we're talking contaminated peanut butter or raw eggs. However, these are not normal circumstances. Even Oprah knows this.

This is my "coming out" moment: I think the economy's going to get worse before it gets better, regardless of Mr. Obama's best efforts. I don't think you can fix the kind of recession we're in, and in private I have even been bandying about the word "depression." As in "like the 1930s, only nobody knows how to cook."

Why is it a big deal if nobody knows how to cook? Well, to put it simply, if everyone is living tighter then nobody can afford to pay people to cook for them. I don't just mean McDonald's, but also Keebler. I know people who think that beans only come in cans, pre-cooked. What's dangerous about this is that if food budgets become straitened, people will have to fall back on inexpensive food like dry beans (1/4 the price of canned, at my supermarket), rice, and cornmeal--which are some of the things the government hands out to folks who get commodities, by the way-- and they will have no idea what to do with it. They'll maybe ruin a good bit of it. And then they'll either eat vile food or go hungry.

I hope I'm wrong and that everything will get better later this year. It would still be good to know how to cook, though, just to be able to keep more of your money. Wouldn't it be better to know how to make your own delectable pot roast from tasty Montana beef, instead of defrosting an icky one from Swanson that may have been slaughtered in Portugal for all you know?

So do this for me, to make me feel better about all of you in These Trying Times: just learn to make a good beans and rice dish from dry components. One you really like. The internet is full of recipies; check out my sidebar link to The Hillbilly Housewife and Frugal Abundance (under Frugal Food Storage) for a lot of bean recipies. I particularly like Frugal Abundance's "Family Favorite Pinto Beans" which cook overnight in the crockpot, no soaking. Leave out the spices and you have a whole bunch of beans you can flavor up in various ways-- do two portions of them as baked beans; then two portions as spicy Mexican beans; then refry some; then use some plain in a green salad with vinegrette...

(I really like beans. Sorry.)

Anyway. I also have these same feelings about mending but I won't make you learn to darn socks and set patches until after the bean project. Just start on something, please. Even if the stimulus works, you'll be glad you did.

Happy beaning,

Breanna

P.S.

If you throw out the water you soak the dry beans in, and then rinse them after they're cooked but before you season them, most of the flatulence-inducing stuff gets rinsed away. Also try eating pineapple with them. Also, the more you eat beans, the more favorable your gut bacteria gets to be to digest the bean enzymes. Maybe yogurt would help. Or just live with people who think gas is funny, like I do.