Sunday, August 10, 2008

No more canned beans

We eat a lot of beans here, mostly because of our vegetarian diet. Two things concern me about canned beans the sodium level and the chemicals used in the can that leach into the food and consequently into our bodies. Until now I have just used canned beans because I always thought it was hard to make beans. Well I decided to give it a try this weekend. After doing some research on line I thought it would be easiest to use the crock pot. The beans turned out great and I can not wait to try another kind next week.

This week I made black beans since they are what we eat the most of. First I rinsed and sorted the dried beans. I then placed the beans in the crock pot with a lot of water. I set the crock pot on high for one hour and then set it to low for 5 hours. I checked on the beans periodically to make sure there was still plenty of water in them and they were not too soft. They turned out great. I divided them into four portions and froze three of them. I used the fourth for dinner.
I will no longer be using canned beans in our house.


A little side note:
I am a vegetarian and I have been for about 14 years now. I do not cook meat in fact I do not even know how to cook meat. Just because I do not eat meat does not mean that the rest of my family are vegetarians. Stephen can cook meat whenever he wants to, although he never does. Andon has turkey sandwiches sometimes and eats meat when we are out. I believe in giving my kids choices and letting them decide what is right for them. It does not matter to me if they choose to be a vegetarian or not, I just hope they make healthy choices.

1 comment:

Steph said...

The great thing about making beans this way is that you can make as many or as few as you want. Doug doesn't eat beans, so I can make beans for just Tatum and me. A can has too many beans for us. I haven't found organic beans this way yet (although I haven't looked very hard), have you?