food waste

Beans. We eat beans almost every single day. In the summertime as fresh green beans and now, as we head into colder months, as dried beans cooked in a pot with other stuff. 

The vines were stripped of all beans. 

These are all edible beans. The thinnest one is a delicious, eat the whole thing bean. The ugly dried up one at the top is a bean that gets stripped from the casing and used as a dried bean. And the two in the middle, still green but with an indelible casing, are allowed to dry up until they look like the one on top, and then the beans from inside are used. The casing goes into compost. 

This box of beans might look inedible or like a box of trash. But inside those no longer edible pods is this wonderful thing. 

That even quicker became a jar of beans. 

Those beans, along with a mason jar of chicken stock we had frozen a month or so ago and a whole chicken went into a Dutch oven on top of the stove. After a few hours on a low setting, we enjoyed a wonderful meal. And will have it again today. 

Not much went to waste. We were pleasantly surprised how rich and satisfying this simple meal tasted. And are looking forward to more!