Frontenac ResilienceSustainable community and more

A reminder of this Saturday’s Country Know-how mini-workshop (January 23rd, 2 pm, Oso Hall in Sharbot Lake). The workshop is on the humble bean, and how useful it can be to you.

Here’s the Country Know-how column for the week of January 7th.

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The simple bean, nutritious, inexpensive, adaptable and delicious as it is, has made itself a staple of country cuisine the world over.I’m speaking of dried beans here. Green beans are what you eat out of the garden, dry beans are the many varieties of the same basic plant when shelled or threshed and stored. After original cultivation in the Andes and Central America at least six thousand years ago, beans became the foundation of Native Americans’ extensive agriculture. If they were eaten here in the north country they were more likely traded than grown, but old settlers in Central Frontenac remember when they were grown locally, with the threshing being done in a bucket.

Beans keep for years if dry. Newer beans cook quickly but if they’re older as they frequently are when purchased, you’d best soak them overnight before cooking. They’re easy to grown and despite the rainy summer we had last year we had enough success to get some seed crop for what we hope’ll be success this year. As beans become adapted to your garden’s soil they build up a relationship with rhizobia, a nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which helps them grow even more successfully. In other words, the more years you grow them the better they grow.

Even if you don’t grow your own, you can buy them inexpensively in bulk and store them. In mylar bags, especially when de-oxygenated, they’ll store a long time indeed. You can take advantage of your freezer and pre-cook them in large batches, saving time and energy. What you freeze could be just the cooked beans themselves, or the ready-for-eating bean dish you’ve prepared in bulk. With your beans stacked up in one-meal servings in the freezer you can pull them out for a quick and delicious addition to your supper. They’re cheap and eating more beans is often linked to eating a bit less meat, which is linked to health benefits. If you can grow beans as well as vegetables, you’re a long way toward being self-sufficient in food.

Country Know-how will have a mini-workshop on “Making the Most of Beans,” hosted by Lynn Shawdchuck on January 23rd at Soldiers Memorial Hall (Oso Hall) in Sharbot Lake. Lynn’s a talented local cook with a wealth of experience preparing bean dishes from a range of ethnic traditions. This isn’t a cooking class, but an opportunity to sample different bean dishes, ask questions about growing and preparing beans. Drop-ins on the day are acceptable but if you can, please call Lynn at 613.279.1966 if you’re planning on coming so she has a sense of how much food to bring.