Farm1 wrote:
songbird wrote:

(snip) ok, i guess that's enough rambles for now. hope
everyone else is having a good fall/spring wherever
you are?

Wow. I've never heard of half the beans you mentioned.

there are an amazing number of new world
bean varieties (kidney and lima beans) on top
of all the old world types. one writer talks
of visiting Mexican villages with their farmer
markets and finding the farmers with their
piles of beans in front of them -- each farmer
having their own variety. in reading his book
with around 50 beans listed only a few were
familiar to me. a few are on my wishlist as
they are touted as being drought tolerant.
worth a test in a few patches that i don't
want to irrigate/water.

i'm still using:

http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html

as my initial list to work from.


Mind you, givne
that I've only recently managed to get Himself to eat more that a very few
typs of bean, I've never grown many varieties. I figure that it's a case of
softly softly catchy monkey when it comes to getting him to eat beans.

most of what i grow are dry bean types for
longer term storage. only a half dozen or so
of the varieties i grew this season were green
or wax beans of the fresh eating kind and besides
those i think i had only a few others that were
shelling types of beans. we much prefer peas
and pea pods for that sort of eating. the edamame
soybeans are a nice addition to that sort of
lineup. some of the dry beans say that they can
be used as a snap bean (fresh), but i can't say
they tasted worth it to me. could have been the
season too as it was hot and dry for so long.


BTW, to convert peeps who don't 'do' chard, it is great in a salad IF you
pick the leaves when they are tiny, mix it with other salad greeens and add
some crispy bacon. Mind you we eat Silver Beet (aka chard) in so many
guises that it's almost a staple for us.

we've eaten them in a spring mix type of salad
but to eat the swiss chard young now would mean
i'd have to replant it from seeds. all the plants
growing now are six months old and the leaves
are anything but tiny.

she won't touch it after i've cooked it. she
likes beets. to me they taste very much alike with
the chard being milder than the beets. the smell of
chard cooking isn't even as strong as beets, still
it bugs her. i think it's just in her head because
she bit into some chard before it was cooked all the
way and it was still a little bitter and that was
all it took for her to set her mind against it...

next time i'll try to explain to her what i think
happened and perhaps she'll manage to try cooked
chard again. she definitely won't try the raw kind.
i already know it's too bitter for her.


songbird