Canning Dry Beans

A healthy source of protein and dietary fiber, dry beans are a mainstay of many diets in poorer countries of the world. I don't know about you, but for me the main reason I don't use beans more often is that I have to think ahead to use them! The traditional method of soaking them overnight to be cooked the next day almost never happens at my house. I just don't think about meals too much the day before. If I decide on beans for supper by lunch time I can do it the quick way by bringing the beans to a boil for five minutes, then letting them soak for an hour before cooking them. But by far the most used beans at our house are the ones I can. Then they're available instantly, for that last minute "I forgot all about supper!" moment, the days we're gone till supper time, for Sunday lunches when we get home from church at 2 pm and needed lunch an hour ago, and for spur of the moment company. Saves on buying junk food for last minute meals, and they're SO yummy!

First you need some sort of dry bean. I've canned kidney beans for chef's salads and chili, navy beans to add to soup, and most of all, pinto or cranberry beans for refried beans in burritos, quesadillas, and bean dip. Pinto and cranberry beans are very similar, though I prefer the cranberry. They're slightly larger and have a smoother texture when mashed.

Put 1 1/3 cups of dry beans into a colander. You'll want to sort through them to pick out any bad beans or little stones that might be mixed with them. Then rinse them, and put them in a quart canning jar. (Make sure the jar is clean and the rim free of cracks or chips that would inhibit the seal.) When all your jars have 1 1/3 cups of beans in them, you can add any seasoning you want. I often just add 1 teaspoon of salt (Real Salt, for the added minerals that they didn't bleach out of it like regular salt), but have added onion salt, onion and/or garlic pieces, cumin, etc.

Clean, washed Cranberry beans in the jar with salt.

 

Once the seasonings are added, fill the jar to the bottom of the threads with water. You want about 1/2 inch of headspace. Set them in your pressure canner. Follow your canner's directions for adding water, etc.

 

Remember to check the vent hole on the canner lid to make sure it's clean and clear! I often forget, but it's an important step.

Secure the lid and follow your canner's instructions to start it. Process at 10 pounds pressure for 25 minutes. You can also use jars of dry beans to fill up a canner of green beans or meat. Makes use of the space without being much extra work!

To use, open the jar and use however you like! I mostly dump all the contents of the jar into my Vitamix and give it a whirl. Add any more seasonings you like, and heat for quick, yummy burritos. The leftovers I'll spread onto half of tortilla, add some cheese, fold the tortilla over, and heat in a skillet for a very quick, nutritious lunch. Serve with salsa, sour cream, and sprouts! Or add sour cream, cheese, cream cheese, salsa, and browned, seasoned ground meat, heat in a crock pot, and serve with chips as a bean dip.

Or rinse a jars' worth of beans and serve on top a chef's salad. Or dump the beans into a pan with some rice and water, season, and cook till the rice is done--voila, Gallo Pinto, the Nicaraguan national dish. Well, to make it authentic you'd need to do a little more, but hey, it works and tastes great! Add the beans to chili or taco soup, or if they're navy beans, to beef/venison/lamb, or chicken stew.

Enjoy!

Sprouts!

Well, in days when I know we're not the only ones looking forward to winter and wondering how to squeeze the most out of every penny and STILL try to eat healthy, I thought I'd post on sprouts. I know a lot of people do make them, but I'm amazed at the number who haven't. . . and think they need this or that to do it.

Sprouting is one of the cheapest easiest ways I know to get good, healthy, fresh, green, crunchy food in the winter. (And thank you Mom for teaching me how to do this!) I sprout both alfalfa and red clover seed, as I don't care for the sprouts with big seeds or spicy flavors. Red clover has a little more zing to it than alfalfa, but it's almost a sweet zing, and I've gotten to really like it. You can also sprout radish seeds and mung beans and all sorts of other things, but I don't get too adventurous in the experimenting department! For one thing, a little goes a long ways in sprouting, so just a small bag of sprouting seeds will last a LONG time. And if we don't like it, well, there it sits making clutter in my little kitchen.

OK, now for the how-to's. To start you need a clear jar of some sort, a clean nylon sock, a rubber band, and 2 Tablespoons of sprouting seeds. I get my seed through the Country Life co-op, but I imagine you can pick them up at any natural/health food store. You could use about any seeds, but the ones packaged for sprouting are clean, and often organic. Put the 2 TB seeds into the jar, fill with water, and let it sit overnight. In the morning (can be as late as late morning--I don't always have time to do it first thing!I've even forgotten and left if all day too, but then it tends to get a little slimy or something) stretch a portion of the sock over the mouth of the jar and secure with a rubber band. Try to get a portion of the sock with no runs, as the seeds are TINY! Pour out the water, fill the jar again, shake, and pour out the water again. Then, once or twice a day, fill the jar with water, shake, and drain. When the jar is full, rinse an extra time, put a regular lid on it, and put it in your fridge to enjoy!



                                            

Draining the water through the nylon for the first time. See the tiny sprouts already starting?

 

After the first rinsing. These are red clover sprouts.

 

I usually leave the jar in a tilted position so the water doesn't tend to just sit (and make things slimy!) on the bottom. Every time I rinse it I rotate the jar.

 

The full jar of sprouts ready for eating! Yummy!

 

We use our sprouts on sandwiches and burritoes mostly, and add them to salads if we spend the money for lettuce--which we rarely do in the winter when we have sprouts around to provide our greens!

Homemade, Whole Wheat, YUMMY Bread!

I don't know how you feel about home made, whole wheat bread. Oh, it smells so good while it's baking! And nothing beats a piece fresh out of the oven with a thick layer of butter on top. Of course, it's better for you, without all the additives found in store-bought bread. And you know it's 100% whole wheat. So, what's the hang up?

Well, for me, the hang up was, once the bread cooled, and especially once it was a day old or so, it was coarse, dry, and crumbly, hard to make into sandwiches without making a mess and needing to cut thick slices just so the bread would have a semblance of holding together. It had to be at least 1/2 white flour to combat that, and preferably more. Plus, it took time to make. As a mom with young children, I don't have any extra time just waiting to be used!

But recently I've found both a recipe and method to combat both problems. The method is to use a bread machine. At some thrift stores you can find them for relatively cheap. I'm on my third machine now. The first one, an Oster, simply quit, and the second was making a racket and the thermostat seemed to be giving out. The machine I have now (Regal Kitchen Pro) does a 2 pound loaf, which is bigger than either of my others, and I really like that. A 2 pound loaf is actually enough to split in half and make two decent size, regular loaves. I used to just let the machine do everything for me. What could be simpler? Pour in the ingredients, and out comes a hot loaf a few hours later! I still do that when I'm in a pinch for time. But the loaf pans are rather an awkward shape, and my husband didn't like it too well. So for now I simply add the ingredients, and put the machine on the dough setting. It takes about 5 minutes, including grinding my own flour in my Vitamix! Two hours later, the dough is ready. I divide it in half, and put it into two loaf pans. After letting it rise for 30-45 minutes (depending on how warm the spot is where I leave them!) I pop it in the oven till I can smell that it's done. I know, I should use a timer, but my nose hasn't let me down yet--and children like to fool with timers! Part of the reason this is such a time-saver is because it really cuts down on the dirty dishes/counter you get when making it by hand. You wash the bread machine pan (which usually ends up quite clean by the time the cycle is done anyway) and the loaf pans if you go that route. Done. No messy, sticky flour on the counter or batter on the whisk or sticky dough on the mixing bowl.

So, now for the recipe. It really is the BEST recipe for 100% whole wheat bread. It has never once failed, except the time I forgot about it and it sat in the machine for hours rising, then when my husband reminded me of it we were already in bed, so I jumped up and stuck it in the fridge overnight--and didn't get around to making it until the next evening. It had gotten tired of rising and tasted a little tart. My fault, not the recipe's! Anyway, it is a soft and flexible bread even a couple of days later, and we can easily cut fairly thin slices without it going to pieces on us. I use my Vitamix dry container to grind the flour on the spot as a general rule, but have used whole wheat flour from the store and it works fine. So, are you ready? Here it is!

1 1/2 cups water
2 Tablespoons soft butter
1/4 cup molasses
1 3/4 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons vital wheat gluten
4 cups flour
1 3/4 teaspoon active/bread machine yeast
Put ingredients in machine in order listed, or mix by hand if you don't have a machine as you would any other bread recipe.

A couple words of warning. If you use freshly ground flour I found it tends to be wetter than store-bought. Users of store bought whole wheat flour, you may need to add a Tablespoon or two of water more so that the dough is moist enough. Also, I only use hard white spring wheat. It's sometimes hard to find it in a flour already, but it is just the best for bread. Hard red wheat, the "normal" whole wheat variety, is courser and makes a courser bread. For any other Vitamix owners out there, 1 1/2 cups of wheat berries will grind into about exactly 2 cups of flour. I rarely measure my flour any more, just grind up two batches of 1 1/2 cups of berries and dump it right in. Plus, in that amount the machine seems to do a better job than when I max it out with the full 2 cups berries it can handle.

So, enjoy your bread! And please, if you try it out, leave me a comment so I know how it turned out. I'm curious if others will have the same success I do.