If you're wanting some Christmas gift buying inspiration, click on over to my daughter Jessica's blog, fort & field, where she has compiled ideas categorized according to interests such as techi, handyperson, traveler, environmentalist, horticulturist, bookworm, letter writer, baker, chef, organizer, creator, mom on the go, and so on. Good stuff... and she continues to add more. One of her ideas led me to ranchogordo.com where I purchased some dry heirloom beans... three kinds. I normally buy my heirloom beans from a neighbor, but her crop fizzled this past growing season. (Click here for a post I did providing a little info on heirloom seeds.)
yellow eye
cranberry
good mother stallard
I read in my Holistic Nutrition textbook that the intestinal gas leading to flatulence when eating beans is mainly caused by oligosaccharides in the beans that are fermenting in the lower intestines. Oh, that mental image is comforting... Because the oligosaccharides are contained primarily in the coverings of the beans, soaking the beans in water overnight and then discarding that water before cooking them in fresh water helps leach out some of their fermenting properties (vs. soaking and cooking them in the same water). One strip of kombu, a high protein seaweed, can also be added to the pot when cooking beans to reduce some of the potential gas-inducing qualities of beans. I set out to give it a whirl... I had kombu but no dry beans... not a one. So, therefore, my online order was placed and Iwill impatiently wait for their arrival.