I love beans of all varieties.
I love putting some pintos and pork into the crock pot to slow cook all day for dinner. Ribs are my favorite cut for the bean pot, but pork chops or chunks of butt work great too. Thrown in a little jalapeno and onion toward the last hour or so of cooking and bake up a pan of cornbread or vegetable corn pancakes in the summer and dinner is done.
This time of year is when the fresh shell beans come in, and while I can't find any fresh, the Pict Sweet Company based in Bells, TN offers fresh frozen varieties in my grocer's freezer case. Speckled butter beans, purple hulls, black eyes, field peas with snaps (green beans), and baby limas were among the selection last time, and I picked up a package of purple hulls. I am hoping they will come up to the memory of the fresh ones I picked and ate in Louisiana.
I got ripped off one time at New Year's when I bought clam shell packages of black eyes in the produce department thinking they were fresh. They were not even as good as the ones I cook up from dry and much more expensive. If I had known what I was buying, I could have definitely gone with dry or maybe frozen. Either would have been an improvement. I found out on eG that they were most likely just soaked dry ones, and sure enough, on reading the teeny tiny fine print, that is exactly what they were. This really stung because it was for a holiday meal. I do not recommend this product at all, and I'll never get suckered again.
What is a Mexican dinner without frioles refritos?
I love canned and rinsed chick peas as a garnish for salads.
Baked beans with onion and whole canned tomatoes mixed with ketchup and mustard with bacon cooked on top low and slow is a dish I almost always fix to go with barbecued pork ribs.
If you don't like beans, though, just don't eat 'em. Life is too short to try to choke down something when there are so many other things available that can be relished.
