Beans

“ On another day she has beans, the dry beans which are such a bother to prepare in small quantities and such an admirable and savory food. She is the village fruit-seller, and when you go to buy your fruit in her little shop, which is nothing more or less than her front parlor transformed, you are sure to find something else appetizing and tempting. ”

“ Bean flour is not only thought more nutritive, but is found to be more abundant than that of oats. Beans are chiefly applied to the feeding of horses, hogs, and other domestic animals; and it is supposed that meal-men often grind them amongst wheat, the flour of which is to be made into bread. By some persons they are roasted, and adopted as a substitute for coffee. With the Roman ladies bean-flour was in much repute as a cosmetic.
Garden-beans are almost wholly confined to culinary uses. What are called French-beans, and Kidney-beans, belong to a different tribe from the present. ”

“ Take your beans and string them, cut in two and then across, when you have done them all, sprinkle them over with salt, stir them together, as soon as your water boils put them in and make them boil up quick, they will be soon done and they will look of a better green than when growing in the garden if; they are very young, only break off the ends, them break in two and dress them in the same manner. ”

“ Put three pints of very small Windsor beans in two quarts of boiling water, a good pinch of salt, and a branch of savory herb. When your beans are thoroughly cooked, drain them and put them in a saucepan, with a pinch of salt, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, and a tablespoonful of savory herb chopped very fine. Mix two eggs in two tablespoonfuls of milk or cream, and add them to your beans, after having taken them off the fire. If, instead of small beans, you have large ones, the skin or peel must be removed. ”

“ French Beans, when eaten before they attain to maturity, are equally palatable and wholesome; and, if ground and mixed with wheaten flour, they would, like other beans or pease, make a good and nourishing bread;—yet the daily use of it is apt to produce costiveness, and otherwise to disorder the alimentary canal. ”

“ The beans are, from earliest time, the most important and interesting of the seeds of the great tribe of plants from which came the Latin and French name for all kitchen vegetables,—things that are gathered with the hand—podded seeds that cannot be reaped, or beaten, or shaken down, but must be gathered green. ”

“ As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual.
It was a singular experience, that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling them—the last was the hardest of all—I might add eating for I did taste. [561] I was determined to know beans. ”

“ Beans are used for food both in the fresh state, while the pods are tender and can be eaten with the immature beans, and also in the dry state, in which condition they are a staple article of food. There are many different varieties of beans which, while not always botanically identical, are sufficiently so to warrant the use of the common name. Two general classes, however, may be distinguished, namely, those that grow in small clusters or bunches and those that grow upon vines or tendrils which have to be supported. ”

“ The nutritive qualities of beans are very well known, and very much exaggerated too. Even Professor Liebig once said that "four quarts of beans and two pounds of corned beef or pork boiled to rags, in fifty quarts of water, will furnish a good meal for forty men." ”

“ Stewed Beans.—Soak a quart of white beans in water over night. In the morning drain, turn hot water over them an inch deep or more, cover, and place on the range where they will only just simmer, adding boiling water if needed. When nearly tender, add salt to taste, a tablespoonful of sugar if desired, and half a cup of good sweet cream. Cook slowly an hour or more longer, but let them be full of juice when taken up, never cooked down dry and mealy. ”

“ Beans, French, Plain Boiled.—French beans are only good when fresh gathered, and the younger they are the better. When small they can be boiled whole, in which case they only require the tips cut off and the string that runs down the side removed. ”

“ This with brown bread or cone pone, baked in the ashes, and good strong coffee, makes a meal in itself, and if the beans are served hot, the hungry campers feel they have had a feast fit for a king. Those who cling to their bean-pots keep one mess of beans baking all the time and are never without this dish. Even city folks have had royal good times at bean bakes given at some home with large yard, and, with an addition to the beans, salads, sandwiches, cakes, and other frills, generally scorned and passed by for the delicious baked beans. ”

“ Heaven be with me, and make my boiled beans take root and grow!’ And when the king asks you how it is possible for boiled beans to grow, answer him, that it is quite as possible as for boiled eggs to yield chickens. ”

“ Field-Beans.—For general culture there are three varieties of white—small, medium, and large. Of all known beans, we prefer the medium white. The China bean, white with a red face, is an early variety. All ripen nearly at the same time. It cooks almost as soon as a potato, and is good for the table; but it is less productive, and less saleable because not wholly white. For planting among corn, as for a very late crop, this bean is valuable, because it matures in so short a time. Good beans may be raised among corn, without injury to the corn-crop. ”

“ The germ of the story of "Jack and the Bean Stalk" is to be found in old Hindu tales, in which the beans are used as the symbols of abundance, or as meaning the moon, and in which the white cow is the day and the black cow is the night There is also a Russian story in which a bean falls upon the ground and grows up to the sky, and an old man, meaning the sun, climbs up by it to heaven, and sees everything. ”

“ Stew the beans until they are perfectly tender and the liquor has reduced a little, then beat up the yolk of an egg with the cream, and add this to the beans. Let the whole get thoroughly hot, and, when on the point of simmering, serve. Should the beans be very large, the skins should be removed previously to boiling them ”

“ As soon as the beans are tender, drain them off, and serve them very hot; the chief point to bear in mind, if we wish to have our beans nice, is, they must be eaten directly they are drained from the water in which they are boiled. They are spoilt by what is called being kept hot, and possess a marvellous facility of getting cold in a very short space of time. ”

“ VARIETIES AND FOOD VALUE OF SHELL BEANS.--When beans have matured on the vines to such an extent that the pods are no longer tender enough for human consumption, they are picked and the seeds then used for food. Some are picked before the seeds have entirely matured, and these, which must be young enough to contain considerable moisture, are cooked fresh; others are allowed to mature entirely and are then dried before they are cooked. After being dried, beans keep indefinitely and require no care in storage except that they must not become moist. ”

“ With this, he put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out five curious-looking beans. "What do you call these?" he said.
"Beans," said Jack.
"Yes," said he, "beans, but they're the most wonderful beans that ever were known. If you plant them overnight, by the next morning they'll grow up and reach the sky. But to save you the trouble of going all the way to market, I don't mind exchanging them for that cow of yours." ”

“ Then the bean dries and drops off—that is all that is left of it, for the germ, or heart, has started growing another plant, you see.
"So don't worry, Mab. Your beans are all right, even if they do seem to be growing upside down. That is the only way they know. From on your beans will grow very fast."
And so they did. Daddy Blake told the children that beans are ready to eat sometimes within six weeks after the seeds are planted. The beans are not ripe, of course, and some are green, while others are yellow, or wax beans. Inside the pods, which are almost like peas, are small green beans. ”

“ Beets, beans, succotash,—that dish to which, with green peas, you swore allegiance in early childhood, and have faithfully kept the vow,—all destroyed by this most villainous compound. You nibble at a bit of bread or piece of potato, and try to wait patiently till the dessert is brought in, for you see no alternative but to make that your principal meal. You wonder if others are as uncomfortable, but, [Pg 273] conscious of the intense disgust your face may exhibit, fear to look boldly around. ”

“ Cooked instanter, buttered, with salt and pepper, eaten the moment it does not blister your mouth, it is the pride of the garden. Cooked the next day and eaten when it has become cool and flabby, it becomes a reproach. It is different with beans. Beans keep, and, hot or cold or warmed over, they are never to be despised. The heaping platters of corn and the bowls of beans that our family could destroy after a morning of hearty exercise were rather staggering. ”

“ DRIED BEANS AND PEAS. When parboiling dried beans for baking, the addition of 1⁄2 teaspoon of baking soda to each 2 cups soaked beans makes the beans tender in a shorter time. When baked, the beans have a much sweeter flavor than those parboiled in plain water. All dried legumes such as lima, soy, kidney or navy beans, and peas, have a better flavor if treated in this manner. ”

“ String beans, should have the strings carefully taken off and if old, the edges should be cut off; if the beans are old put saleratus in the pot, in the proportion of half a tea spoonful of saleratus, to a peck of beans it should be put in before the beans. Boil them from twenty five to thirty minutes, salt and butter them when you take them up. Beans and all other summer vegetables, should not be picked longer than one day before being cooked; the fresher green vegetables are the better they are and more healthy. ”

“ On the other hand, if one has to use a few food materials over and over, as one must in many places when the money that can be spent for food is very little, it is by slight changes in their form and flavor that one keeps them from palling on the appetite. If one has to use beans every day, it is a good thing to know a dozen different ways of preparing beans. One may have the plain bean flavor, properly toned up by a suitable amount of salt; the added flavor of onions, of tomatoes, of fat pork, of molasses, or a combination of two or three. ”

“ Beans are on sale at the present day for numerous purposes, and are employed for feeding cattle, and man more particularly. They are mixed, also, among most nations, with wheat,248 and panic more particularly, either whole or lightly broken. In our ancient ceremonials, too, bean pottage249 occupies its place in the religious services of the gods. Beans are mostly eaten together with other food, but it is generally thought that they dull the senses, and cause sleepless nights attended with dreams. Hence it is that the bean has been condemned250 by Pythagoras ”

“ The ripe beans are white, spotted and marked about the eye with rusty-yellow, oblong, inclining to kidney-shape, more flattened than those of the Red or Black Eyed, five-eighths of an inch long, and three-eighths of an inch in breadth: fifteen hundred and fifty are contained in a quart, and will plant two hundred feet of drill, or a hundred and fifty hills. The plants are large and spreading, and most productive when not grown too closely together. ”

“ Taking the Crop.—The pods should be gathered for use when the seeds are comparatively young, or when they are of the size of a marrowfat-pea. As a general rule, all vegetables are most tender and delicate when young; and to few [Pg 505] esculents does this truth apply with greater force than to the class of plants to which the English Bean belongs.
Use.—The seeds are used in their green state, cooked and served in the same manner as shelled kidney-beans. The young pods are sometimes, though rarely, used as string-beans. ”

“ The food value of beans increases as they mature, as will be observed upon reference to Table I. The very young beans, that is, the string beans, which include the pods and all, are comparatively low in food value, being only a little higher than asparagus. ”

“ Before science made its discovery, the blacks were very positive on the point of the poisonous qualities of the bean, and took measures to eliminate it. In some parts of the State the beans, after being steeped in water for several days, are dried in the sun, roasted in hot ashes, and pounded between stones into a coarse kind of meal, which may be kept for an indefinite period. When required for use the meal is mixed with water, made into a thin cake or damper, and baked in the ashes. ”

“ We were always taught to select seed thus, in my tribe.
White men do not seem to know very much about raising beans. Our school teacher last year raised beans in a field near the school-house; and when harvest time came, he tried to pluck the pods directly into a basket, without treading or threshing the vines. I think it would take him a very long time to harvest his beans in that manner. ”

“ They may be served with the Salad Entrée dressing, Improved Mayonnaise or French dressing, with oil or lemon juice or with Chili sauce, but they all spoil that delightful bean flavor in the rich, thick juice. Beans have a characteristic flavor which is destroyed by the addition of anything but salt and water. Molasses, cream, nut butter and tomato are all good in their place, but that is not in baked beans if we attain to the keenest enjoyment of the bean flavor. We get the rich red color, without the rank molasses taste, by prolonged baking. ”