Update: A Year of Beans

So, I didn’t keep up this blog. Oh shocker? 🙂

Work kinda got in the way (we shipped it though! earlier this week! see OpenAlex if you are curious 🙂 )

BUT I did keep gathering bean recipes, and kept cooking beans. I cooked a total 301 bean recipes in 2021. !!!

I also kept cooking just one bean a month for 10 of the 12 months. It went:

• January: black eyed peas
• February: chickpeas
• March: adzuki beans
• April: kidney
• May: cannellini
• June: fresh green peas
• July: <improv>
• August: pinto
• September: lentils
• October: black beans
• November: navy and great northern beans
• December: <improv>

My family rated each of the recipes out of five stars, with five being the best. We gave 114 *****, 110 ****, 56 ***, 15 **, 4 *, and if that doesn’t add up to 301 that’s ok because this is my hobby not my day job 🙂

It was all an overwhelming success. It was fun to collect the recipes (I now have, um, 1499 bean recipes in my recipe collection), find the strange ingredients, cook the food, eat it, think about it, and in general be creative in this new way in my life. My daughter and husband enjoyed all the home cooked food, did mountains of shopping and dishes, and are game for more.

So I think we’ll keep cooking beans this coming year. Not quite sure the structure, if any, will see. Did already make a pot of baked beans in a dutch oven I got for Christmas 🙂

For those of you who are looking for good bean recipes — I’ll link to the best of in the next post.

For now just want to say I wish everyone crazy happy hobbies for the coming year.

Happy National Bean day today (USA, Jan 6th), and here’s hoping for a good 2022.