Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-09-19
Some Ways with Beans.

lit Is only since modern science has
come to the rescue of puzzled house
keepers, and tables of food values
been made up after long and careful
chemical and other experiments. that
the bean has taken its true place.
From the beginning of history It has
formed part of the food supply, car
ried often as an exotic by WANDERING
and invading tribes, and rejected
often at points where it would have
been most useful The English for
example, choose to consider the eatino
of dried beans as a French notion not
to be tolerated, and exported their
supply as food for slaves while slavery
still lasted. and even to-day, one dis
covers in rural England, that the
prejudice still fingers. On the CONT
nent and indeed in many portions of
Asia and Africa they are staple, and
in the United States no less, though in
the South they are simply stewed, the
baked bean of New England being al
most unknown.
There is calculation still extant,
made by a famous Boston divine. of
the number of busheIS of baked beans
he had preached to during passionate
of some thirty years, and the dish
loses none of its popularity as time
goes on. 1t has a scientific basis too;
It's combination of pork and little
molasSes, being an instructive inclusion
of precisely the elements required to
give the utmost nutrition. The bean
is rich in nitrogen-a matchmaking
factor; the pork added the necessary
heat-producing element, essential for
the worker in cold climate, and the
molasses corrected a certain acrid
quality and made them more digesti-
bic. Long cooking, which is essential
for beans in any form, reduce the
tough skins to something manageable.
For the hard worker they are no OBJ
lection. With those who take little
exercise they often digagree, and for
this reason may better be removed
for soups or purees, by rubbing through
a sieve.
Dried beans of all sorts, require SIM
ply dry, cool place for their perfect
keeping. in choosing varieties for
family use, dark ones like the speckled
cranberry or the turtle-bean are richer
in flavor and make the best soup
or PURGE, while the lighter ones are
most delicate for stewing. For bak-
ing. any ordinary dried bean can be
used, but the preference is generally
for the smallest white cranberry bean.
Dried Limas or butter beans are the
choicest for general table use, the
latter being a faYorite bean in both
France and Spain as well as in Mexico.
For every rule in every country the
essential in preparing beans for the Ia
bic, is, long, slow cooking, and where
this is secured the best qualities of this
Indispensable vegetable are empha-
sized, and the most sensitive stomach
finds them wholesome and appetite
ing food. Where they are freely used
the quantity of meat eaten may well
be lessened, as the bean abounds in
matchmaking material, and at the
same time has no over-stimulant for
the nerves which Americans own in
undue proportion, and which need
various alterations in our present
dietary. The Pythagoreans, were
wiser people than they are held to be,
and the application of some of their
laws of food would mean purer blood,
clearer heads, and dismission of the
doctors. Their faith in beans had
good foundation, and it is another
tribute to the Pilgrim mothers, that
they dropped their English prejudices,
discovered the proper combination
and placed beans in the front rank of
vegetables most serviceable to man.
Good HOuSeEeepiug.