Make Your Own Beans or Ful Medames

This morning I stepped on the scale and the number had gone up instead of down or staying in place. I had had nothing planned for dinner tonight (late on menu planning) so I have decided to make what our son lovingly called ‘make your own beans’ when he was a toddler. It’s basically an ancient recipe and possibly one if the oldest street foods, so I have been told. All it is is beans, cooked, served with seasonings- traditionally salt, olive oil, garlic and pepper.

Variations include cooking eggs in their shells with the beans and adding onion skins or coffee to the cooking liquor. We’ve decided that coffee makes the best ful for us, so that’s what I now use. 🙂 I also prefer darker beans for this recipe, as it’s dependent on the beans for flavor.

So I am going to start with three cups of these dark red beans (about a pound) in the pressure cooker. This would feed four people, if they like beans.

Then I nestle six eggs in the beans.

And then I add about a cup of brewed coffee and a quart of water. If I were using anything other than my Instant Pot, I would add more water and watch it more. I have made this in the slow cooker, on the range and in the oven. I have not yet tried it in the ashes of a campfire, but I really want to. 🙂

And that is it. Cool until the beans are done. I have all day and the pot will take under an hour. Other cooking versions take different times. The next step will come at serving, so by the magic of the internet…

Here are the beans, done and able to be crushed by the back of a spoon.

They will sit like that until serving time. Which is now. 🙂 We have sourdough bread, salt, oil, pepper and fresh garlic.

You can mash it together and serve like hummus. Make it into a wrap. Serve as a side dish. Skip the egg. Add tomato, chili, parsley, any seasoning you want. It’s a simple, healthy, filling meal that should be on rotation in any home that loves pulses.

Car Garbages

 

 

I don’t know about you, but every time I clean out the car, I am collecting Apple cores, granola bar wrappers, candy wrappers, dirty tissues and other small things. Things that are just too small to need a plastic shopping bag for (and who wants to use those anyway?) But too easy to forget in a door pocket or cup holder. So I wanted something smaller and convenient that wouldn’t get lost and would easily hold the daily garbage we gathered, not a whole road trip worth. Something we always have a plethora of in our house is old ripped jeans.

You know what works? A pant leg with the cuff as the top, with a circle stitched to the open end, and a button and loop to close it over the headrest, and there we go. Simple. Now I have to make another for his car, so here are pictures and directions in progress.

Jeans our son grew out of. Too holey to give away. Green thing on the right is a latch hook kit started in 86 and finished last year. Will become a pillow for the bus. That is a forthcoming project. 🙂

Anyway, to the bag making!

These are longer than the pair I used for the first one, so I am cutting below the knee. I am cutting the bottom out of the space below the knee. I am not cutting a circle, I will just trim it down after it is sewn.

 

 

(My go to pins are simple Dritz quilting pins. I use them for everything except fine fabrics. They work really well for all my sewing.)
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Cutting the strap. About 8 1/2 by 1 1/2 inches.

Best tool ever for turning strips right side out.

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Ends are turned in and sewn. Now to pick out a button. I can’t find mine, so I am using my mom’s collection.

And a test buttonhole. Because if I don’t, I will mess up. 🙂

And, attaching the strap, the bobbin thread runs out. As always.

I love how any machine with a big zag will see on a button. Saves time!

And it’s ready to go in the car!

At another point, I may wax them to make them water resistant. You’ll never be able to dump a coffee in it, but something damp won’t damage it when waxed. Right now they aren’t, but they can be thrown in the washer when the get dirty.

What do you think? I love it.

Are pulses toxic?

Well, if you are looking for a reason to avoid pulses, I am sure this will do. Beans are certainly, surprisingly, toxic. They are also surprisingly easy to make safe.

First, it’s mostly kidney and Lima beans that are toxic. Second, the toxins will make you moderately ill, at worst, unless you are eating your weight in beans. Third, it is laughably easy to make these beans safe.

Lima beans (also called butter beans when fresh) have linamarin in them, a compound that could potentially make you ill because of it’s similarity to cyanide. This toxin is broken up by cooking the beans, so the rule is to never eat raw Lima beans.

A different toxin, phytohaemagglutinin, a lectin, is also present in many beans. Red kidney beans are the worst culprit, however, and care should be given when making them. Again, cooking them will destroy the toxin. A hard boil for 10 minutes is enough to make the beans safe, but the FDA says 30 minutes just to be sure. The problem comes in slow cookers, which may not heat the beans high enough with low cooking temps. Pressure cookers, the range, and some slow cookers will be fine.

Again, these toxins are not fatal, and are easy to get rid of. And even if you do get sick, odds are it will last only a few hours. However, if you want to follow a ‘raw’ diet, pulses may not be your food of choice.

In addition, a small percentage of the population will potentially die from fava (broad) beans. These will only hurt you if you have a medical illness, but it is yet another way this incredibly healthy food can kill us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gvnQfbrIA

So, if you really want to be a bummer at events and avoid eating beans at all costs, there you go. For the rest of us, let’s forge on!

(Lima beans are capitalized because they are named after Lima, Peru, where they have been cultivated for 6000+ years)

Surviving independently in a city.