h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some beans have multiple names. Take the borlotti, which is also known as cranberry bean and Roman bean.

Plus, there's a bewildering number of beans -- pea beans, navy beans, pigeon peas, Great northern beans, Abenaki beans, mung beans, soy beans, fava beans, shell beans, Kentucky Wonders, Blue lake beans, string beans, red lentils, green lentils, lima beans, black-eyed peas, yellow-eye beans, cannellini, red kidney beans, dark red kidney beans, pink beans, small red beans, etc.

I like Garbanzo beans - it sounds like something from The Muppets. Although we always call them chickpeas

Pythagoras had very forthright views about beans. I think because they don't have a hypotenuse.

Maybe the Great Gonzo likes garbanzos.

I've no idea what beans they are... but the little general store shop two doors up f from me (very useful place), has some really weird and wondefful ones, in tins, I've never heard of... I really oughta just get some, some time, see if they're any good or not... at least from out of a tin, I guess they oughta be easier to cook than getting the dried versions and trying to hutn round, to find cooking instructions, for timings etc., and then not even knowing what beans one is looking at, due to all the nomenclature confusion

Crap. This post just vanished.

Anyway as I was saying, I like the little cartons of chickpeas in water. Dead handy.

I don't really use that many kinds of beans/pulses. Red lentils, split yellow peas, chickpeas, green lentils, plain ol' green peas, puy lentils...that's about the height of it.

Lentils are a fantastic food, though. There's something very filling and comforting about them. In parts of India, tarka dhal is a staple with every meal, like potatoes or bread here. I can see why, too!

Beans is one reason I've been meaning to get a pressure cooker for ages. You don't need to soak them, they cook in a fraction of the time and pressure-cooking them automatically removes any of the... stuff that hard-boiling beans for 20 minutes gets rid of, so you never have to worry about which ones you have to and which you don't. I used to have one (about 35 years ago) and used it almost every day until the rubber sealing ring inside the lid hardened and wouldn't keep the pressure in any more, and I couldn't find a replacement, so I continued using it as a big saucepan for a few more years. No bad thing.

I don't really know why I put off getting one more recently. I remember looking at them online and trying to decide which one to get. I have a an electric cooker, and they work rather better on a gas hob, so I thought about getting one of the electric pressure cookers that you plug in, but that limits what you can do with it... like using it as a saucepan if the seal goes. Or if it doesn't.

And going in the other direction, I thought about - but never got around to - getting a slow cooker too, for things like stews, but also for overnight porridge, and that's the best porridge you'll ever taste In the end I suppose it came down storage space and countertop space I don't live in the

Lentils *are* a fantastic food Lentil loaf is something I make often. Very cheap and very

I got a slow cooker last year... decent sized one... but I find stews etc., have a differnt consistancy in it, to when I make them on the stove top... think I prefer the stove top versions, for most things I've tried in it Mind, it doesn't help I don't really have any room for it in the kitchen, its stored on top of a pair of speakers, in my studeo/computer room Not sure about pressure cookers, don't think I've even ever seen one
lentils are though... which reminds me, not had them ina ages... a few years back I basically went through a period when I just about lived on lental dal mainly taka dal - sure I've still got the ajwain seeds floating about in the cupbaord for that, and I tink the red split lentil box is still pretty full

I think you're meant to use an awful lot less water or stock in a slow cooker because there's not the same evaporation as you get with a saucepan. Maybe that's why the consistency is different?

I'd quite like a slow cooker, but when I get things like that they usually end up in the back of a cupboard to give more room on the worktops.

In the cupboard behind all the saucepans are a Foreman grill yoke, a toastie maker, two() blenders, two hand-held blenders, (again, *why*? ), a salad spinner and an electric carving knife. Most of them never see the light of day!

To be honest I prefer simpler, more multifunction tools: pots and pans, oven, microwave and knives. You can usually get what you want done with those.

One thing I'd like and use regularly is a pestle and mortar, but I never remember to buy one, or when I see it it's more than I want to pay. (Funny how I think of it as a thing in the singular, when it's really a two-thing-set, like a bat and ball...)

Here's something that illustrates perfectly the confusion not just about beans, but recipes in general.

I have four recipes (on my PC, probably a few more in books) for tarka dal. Two of them called tarka dal, one is tarka dhal, and the other is called tadka dhal. Two of them call for "yellow lentils", one for "Chana dal (yellow split peas)" and one simply for "split yellow peas"

Yeah, I usually just wing it with whatever ones I happen to have at the time as it's so hard to know which ones they really mean!

I have troublke4 digesting split peas, but lentils are no trouble at all.

when i see the title of this thread i keep thinking of 2legs as an agony aunt


anyway... apparently there is a dish called black peas that is traditional in these parts at bonfire night rather confusingly it is also sometimes called pigeon peas but those are something different entirely...

Apparently, bouillon and vinegar and pepper bring out the taste.

http://www.chocolateandbeyond.co.uk/2012/10/lancashire-bonfire-black-peas.html

It doesn't seem as though that kind of pea is grown much outside Lancashire.

Would 2legs be that bad an agony aunt, really? He seems to have the "agony" bit sorted, anyway.

I'd be brillient at that! "dear confused of tumbridge wells........... "

Is confusion a necessary skill for the job?

In order to succesfully, and througherly, unwravel people's problems, I feel a necessarily, sufficient amount of confusion must be allied with a deep and meaningful understanding of the outstanding problem, in its myriad complexity; to unwravel the interconnectiveness of the various threads, which have coalesed into the person's individualistic, and personal problem, and thereby, desiminate the ultimate solution to the entire prlblem, as a whole, including all holistic elements that may be at teh core route of the issue/problem; taht which then is by confusion solved, cannot, and shouldn't, by confustion be unwravelled again, as the entire holistic solution precludes any external, seemingly dissasociated un making, of the solution itself; the whole, not the point, the entirity, not just the single, of the seeming issue, to create a holistic and zen-like perminancy in solution which reveals the individuals true inner intentions and needs, within their entirity

"Entirity" is one a them hunnert-dollar words! Four sillybles an'
whatnot. Ah'll hafta ast th' schoolmarm whut it means!