It's Bean Time!

I had purchased a lot of dried Roman Beans for 50 cents a pound at one of those outlet stores a couple of months ago. I had no idea what they were, but they were dried, cheap and looked a lot like pinto beans, so they came home with me. I did some research on the net and found that these beans can be used interchangeably with kidney beans, black beans. chili beans and pinto beans. Sounds like I found a goodie!

I decided that it would be a good time to try them, so I soaked 2 pounds to can for soups, etc. and while I was at it, I thought I'd do a pound of baby limas as well. I sat down with the Ball Blue Book and found that for every quart of beans I want, I need 3/4 pound of dried beans. Hmmmm - not enough for a canner load, so I decided to try SB Summer BBQ Beans from SB Canning to make a full load.

I used Garden Gnome's recipe for Home Canned Kidney Beans & Lima Beans as she does her beans just a little different than I normally do. If you haven't been to her website called Mom's Cafe Home Cooking, you really must! She has so many great recipes posted there with a lot of guidance for both the newbie and the experienced cook alike. I love her site!

Well, it appears Ball was quite a bit off the mark on how much I needed. I ended up with 4 pints of Baby Limas, 6 pints of regular Roman Beans and 6 pints of SB Summer BBQ Beans with quite a bit left over!! My All American Pressure Canner only holds 16 pints so I decided to use the leftover in chili for dinner tonight.

The beans cooked up nicely. They were meaty and larger than normal beans and made a delicious chili!

Dinner - a nice bowl of chili on a bed of salad topped with cheddar cheese, sour cream and taco sauce. Oh man! I'm glad there were leftover beans!!!