How do you like YOUR beans?

Our family loves beans. As funny as it sounds, when I eat beans, I almost feel like my grandparents are in the room with me. When I was growing up, I would go spend at least one week each summer with my grandparents and they would always cook beans. The smell of brown beans cooking just makes me feel like I'm in their house! Even though there was only one pot of beans, we could eat them in different ways. My grandfather could have beans for dinner every night, and never had the same meal. One night he might have beans and cornbread. The next he might have beans with onion slices on top and tomato on the side. The next he might have mostly broth (he called it bean soup) in a mug with a piece of bread to sop up every last drop. Even though I loved the beans by themselves, I usually would mix in crumbled Fritos and cheese.

Since they are such a cozy treat for me, I've tried to pass on my love of brown beans to my children. I serve them with Fritos and cheese, and even though this probably makes them a little less healthy, they still are very nutritious. Here is a link to an article I found by Dan Gill, who seems just as sentimental about beans as I am, but knows the facts about their nutritional value: http://www.pine3.info/Brown%20Beans.htm

Recently, a friend told me she went to a bean seminar. Isn't that one of the funniest things you've ever heard? A seminar about beans - just my kind of thing! I hope they have another one and that I get to go! I want to learn more ways to cook my beans! And not just beans, but all legumes. I think I could really become a legume lover!

Brown beans were really the only legume I would eat until high school. That's when my friends, Coco and Miel, introduced me to lentils! We were on a vacation at the beach, staying in a condo, and they made lentil soup for our lunch. At the time, I didn't want to admit that I had never had a lentil, didn't know what it was, and thought it was a very strange food to eat on a vacation. But the soup was pretty good and an interesting memory. Then, after Ramiro and I were married, I started cooking more healthy recipes. I found several recipes for lentils that we really liked. I still make our favorite two - a creamy potato and lentil soup (with bacon on top because we still like our meat) and a lentil and brown rice casserole. However, since Hannah and Luke don't really like these, I'm on the lookout for more kid-friendly lentil recipes.

Luke's favorite legumes are definitely soybeans. I like to buy the prepackaged edamame bowls from Costco. He can eat a bowl all by himself. You'd think they were candy the way he gobbles them up! When he eats them, he's on a mission. He won't stop until every bean has been eaten!

Hannah's legumes of choice would probably be peas, but not the way you might think. She loves to eat them right out of the freezer. They're one of her favorite treats. In fact, she used to ask for them for dessert as if they were as tasty as ice cream! I really don't like peas, but I tried them frozen just to see if I could have another option to Blue Bell, as well. Unfortunately, frozen peas don't taste any better to me than cooked peas. Things may be changing for me, though. One of my sweet neighbors from India brought me some curried peas and potatoes yesterday. They were delicious! The spices completely covered up the pea flavor. I'm looking forward to getting her recipe and trying it for my family.

You may be wondering why I decided to write about beans. I saw this blog from The 99 Cent Chef: Cuban Black Beans. I'm definitely going to try out his method of fixing up canned black beans, which we always have a good stock of in the pantry.

I'd love to hear how you cook your beans (or other legumes). Please send me your recipes!