Home-Grown Black Bean Chili

There really isn't much to this recipe but a friend asked about it so I thought I'd try writing it out. It's just something simple I threw together to use some fresh shelled black beans I had on hand. My Black Valentine bushes produced a second flush of pods late this summer that didn't have time to ripen and dry before the cold weather hit. You can, of course, cook dry beans to use or even resort to canned beans if you absolutely have to.

• 2 teaspoons canola oil
• 1/2 medium white onion, diced
• 1/4 cup peppers finely diced -- blend sweet and hot to taste
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2-3 teaspoons chili powder
• 2 cups diced whole tomatoes
• 2 cups cooked black beans
• salt

Heat canola oil in a saucepan and in it sauté the onion and peppers. When they're softened, add a couple cloves of minced garlic and chili powder. Sauté half a minute more. Add tomatoes and cook until they're soft. Dump in the black beans and simmer gently to blend the flavors, about 20 minutes. Salt to taste and serve. When I made this I purposely tried to primarily use produce from my own garden and did pretty well. Only the oil, chili powder and salt were purchased. I'm looking into making my own chili powder but it's going to require a better cumin crop than I had this year--which would be any cumin at all. I was inspired to try the bit of frying the powder with the first round of  veggies from a lot of the Indian recipes I've made. I believe the theory is that the more intense "dry" heat brings out the flavor and toasts the spices before adding the liquid component. In any case, this was tasty for being so simple. Doubtless there are many variations I could try, especially in the home-grown vegetable department.

Lima Beans

This year I grew lima beans. On purpose. They're also known as butter beans or butter peas.

I can't remember if they were seeds I purchased myself or got from my garden guru. They were called 'White Dixie Butter' and I find it hard to resist anything with butter in the name, especially a bean. I planted them fairly late compared to the other beans since I planned on picking them as shell beans and didn't worry too much about them reaching the dry stage. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them, just noticing that they'd bloomed and that pods were forming. Then a few days ago I finally looked up when they should be harvested. I read that they are good when the pods are fatter but not too yellow. Next time I was in the garden I pinched a few pods and could feel the little tell-tale bumps but they weren't what I would call fat. Then I noticed that some pods were dry and brown and a few had been chewed by pests. Popping open one of the fatter pods I was reminded that lima beans are flat compared to the other beans I grow. I looked over the small patch and decided rather than go over them every day or two looking for all the "just right" pods that enough were ripe or beyond. In cut all the plants at the base and brought them home. It was much more comfortable sitting on the deck stripping the pods off the plant than it would have been crouched in the garden.

The co-conspirator pitched in sorting the dry from the fresh pods--which included a number of under-ripe ones and we got to work shelling. In the end, knowing how many seeds I planted that actually grew into plants that produced beans and how much we ended up with I calculated a yield of nearly one hundred-twenty five times what was planted. Had I not wasted some that weren't ripe that number doubtless would have been higher! It occurred to me that the quick bean counting I did a while back was in error. I didn't account for the fact that not all the bush beans planted grew and produced. Beans are often touted as one of the most productive crops you can grow. I know I'm convinced.

"Pick 'em, hull 'em, put on the steam. That's how we fix butterbeans!"

Increase

Yesterday I picked the last of one varieties of beans I grew to dry this season. It's Jacob's Cattle Gasless. As luck would have it, I had a record of how much I planted. Compared to what I harvested, discounting the bad ones I threw away, I got out twenty-four times as much as I put in. The ounce of seed I planted yielded a pound and a half of dried beans. I'm curious now to see how that yield relates to other beans.



Were I to save all these beans, plant them next year and get a comparable harvest, I would be looking at a full thirty-six pounds of beans! My guess is that that is more beans than we eat in a year. We definitely wouldn't eat the 864 pounds we'd have the year after that if I did the same.

Update: As mention here, I completely forgot to account for the beans that were planted but for whatever reason failed to grow and produce. Beans are even more productive than I realized!

Fava Beans

Today I decided to pick a couple of the largest pods from our Windsor Broad Bean or Fava Bean plants, Vicia faba. They're getting big! I've never grown them before so I have no idea how long to let them grow. The first few I got were pretty undersized. The thickness of the pod is deceiving because it's lined with a thick, spongy material. I'll be blanching these and then peeling them before deciding what their final fate will be.