Just wanna thank everyone for all the warm welcomes you have given me. Seems like a pretty comfy cozy place to be.
Nice to know that alot of you are liking the website I put up. I'm not an expert HtML and CSS coder, but I seem to get away with what I do.
I think digitS asked me what vegies and spices I use for my bean soups. Well actually I have not made alot of bean recipes. Just the one that I concockted myself some years ago. It has a jar of chicken stock in it. Like Wyler's Chicken Granules or the pasty stuff called It's Better Than Boullion, black pepper, a pound baby carrots, stalk of celery, (that whole darn package of celery they usually wrap in plastic at the grocery) one large cooking onion (either yellow or white) pound and a half to 2 pounds of great northern beans (depending how thick you want your soup to be), and two 13 ounce cans of white chicken breast meat. I usually buy my canned chicken at Sam's Club. They had a brand called Members Mark I liked, but they have changed the name and label on the can recently. Stew the beans in a 5 quart stock pot with one gallon of water, after an hour I blacken the top of the water a bit with black pepper, and add the chicken stock. Then I dice up the carrots, celery, and onion, and add that to the mixture after the mixture has been stewing (simmer on low heat) for about 3 hours. I drain the cans of chicken and put all that meat in a bowl where I take a wooden spatula that has a fairly fine edge to it and use that to tear up the chicken meat into lots of fine shreds. That way I get an even amount of meat in each bowl of soup. I add the chicken to the pot at the fourth hour when the stewing process is finished. If you let the mixture cool down a bit and put it in the fridge and try it the next day the mixture will thicken up a bit and I think it has more flavor too. I have never soaked the beans overnight. Just start stewing them dry. You can pre-soak them if you like.
The taste of this soup can be affected by the taste of your water. Sometimes I've made this soup at my sister's house in Arizona (Phoenix), and I don't like the taste of the water in her area so I use a gallon of drinking water purchased at the store. Everyone who I've given this recipe too has never told me they didn't like it, but then again there's always a first time for everything . I also have made this receipe with black turtle beans or black frejoles ( did I spell that correctly, Maybe
) you can buy them in the Mexican section of many grocery stores. I've also made this with white Navy beans. Would like to get a hold of a White Kidney bean and grow a bunch to try in this soup. I've also made this with Pinto Beans, and don't quite like the flavor with Pintos. I think Pintos might be good in recipes with stronger flavorings. Also did this recipe with Jacob's Cattle once and they didn't seem as if they were a very solid bean when stewed up.
Years ago I purchased John Withee's bean cook book, but have never tried any of his recipes. I should learn how to make some baked bean recipes.
hoodat asked if I have ever grown epazote. No I have never heard of that. Sounds interesting. Can I get that in a seed catalog? Might be a herb of some type. I get the blow and it's almost bad enough to knock myself out. I don't understand why because I live on such a steady diet of beans throughout the year. Before I go to the Seed Savers Exchange Campout/Convention in July I stop eating beans several days before I arrive at the event. I'll have to check out The Seed Savers yearbook to see if anyone offers epazote.
Spacing on beans. I believe that beans grown for seed will produce a bigger volume and more robust crop if given a little more space. I plant bush beans about 8 inches apart in a row, and rows nearly 30 inches apart. I plant at full 8 inches right away. You can thin your stand if you like but I never do. If I thin the beans I feel like I'm wasting precious heirloom seed. However I've got a lot of space to work with. This past year I rented a piece of ground over 3,300 square feet in size. I've grown beans for seed in small raised beds with rows 12 inches apart. They weren't as productive, but it can be done that way. My pole beans I plant around 1 x 2 inch stakes cut to about 6 feet 8 inches tall hammered into the ground. Stakes are spaced about 5 feet apart in the row, and rows about 6 feet apart (although my 2012 pole beans were a bit tight this year) . I usually plant about 4 seeds around each pole. 1 north, 1 south, 1 east, and 1 west. So my pole bean seeds probably wind up being space about 8 inches from each other. Up along two edges (opposite sides from each other) of the 1 x 2 pine stakes I screw in at a 45 degree angle some sheetrock screws left sticking out of the wood a few inches. So when the plants climb the poles and if we happen to get a 70 mile an hour wind storm. The beans won't slither back down the poles, and wind up in a pile on the ground. However when you are putting up the poles and taking them down at the end of the season be mindful of the screws sticking out. They are not merciful on exposed flesh. My system has worked well for me and I seem to like it. I suppose if you grow pole beans on a different arrangement like a solid contiuous fencing I think I would try planting the seeds about a foot apart. I wonder how Bill Best spaces his pole beans. He's got alot experience growing them. I should put up a photo or two of my pole beans growing in my 2012 bean patch on the Photo Album page on my site for anyone who wants to take a look. I'll tell you I'm not an expert on beans either. There are all sorts of growing arrangements that can be done with them. Certainly for growing beans for seed. They need some space, and when the plants begin to yellow out, begin losing their leaves and the pods begin to dry that space is good for air curculation between the plants so you can get good drying results. You don't want the pods remaining damp for extended periods of time. Damp pods mold, and start to decay and spoil the seeds that have formed inside. This is especially true if you live in areas of the country where rainfall is still fairly prevelent at drying time. In some areas of the country where the weather gets dryer in the fall after beans have matured from dry air masses coming down from the artic. In places like North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Northern Michigan. They have gotten the planting of commercially grown beans down to about 15 inch spaced rows. Of course all this is done with fertilizers so the beans get only just the amount of fertillizer they need for maxium production. Herbicides for weed control because the plant spacing is so tight they can't mechanically cultivate out the weeds. Then the crop is harvested with combines.
Sometime I'll write about how Wanigan Associates worked.
