BEAN MONTH

photo source

Growing up, I didn't really feel one way or another about beans.  Here and there, I'd eat a few chickpeas, fava beans, or kidney beans, and lots of pinto beans alongside burritos.  They were fine.

But during the first summer I worked in the kitchen at Chez Panisse, I fell in love with beans.  Every Monday we received a shipment of vegetables from Chino Ranch, and it was my job to unpack it and put everything away.  That summer, I saw true cranberry beans for the first time--as red and round as their namesake fruit--and peeled fresh giant lima beans we simmered and serve alongside braised pork.  I was still in college, still planning to head to graduate school for poetry upon graduation, and I reveled in the names of the varietals--Dragon's Tongue, Painted Pony, Lina Sisco's Bird Egg, Coco Bianco and Coco Nero, Tiger's Eye, Snow Cap, and Jacob's Cattle.

And then, I tasted them.  I'd never known a bean could be so satisfyingly creamy or so sweet.  I was a goner.

I've loved beans ever since.  The first article I pitched to a magazine was about shelling beans.  They were the first seeds I planted when I started to garden.  I buy beans at the market in every country I visit.

But what cemented my interest in beans as a cooking teacher, and why I want to dedicate this month to celebrating beans is this: a couple of years ago, I heard Mark Bittman say was that he'd consider his career a success if he could get every family in America to make rice and beans once a week. I couldn't agree more.  Besides being beautiful and labeled with playful names, beans are accessible, cheap, nutritious and delicious.  They are easy to cook, and lend themselves to a thousand different uses in the kitchen.

And since beans are for everyone, I'm declaring January #beanmonth.  I'll be posting all sorts of links, recipes, resources, photos, poems, and more here, and on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  I've started a board on Pinterest dedicated to BEANS, and I've invited friends all around the internet to join me.  Wendy MacNaughton and I are even planning a very special giveaway at the end of the month.    

Come, follow along!  Share your own recipes, links and photos with the #beanmonth hashtag.  I'd love to see everyone's favorite ways to cook and eat beans!

p.s. Lentils and chickpeas count!

mini cuba.

here's a tiny visual cuba update, since if i don't put something up now, it may be months before i get anything "perfect" together.  i took lots of film photos, and we're all planning to get together and exchange photos and videos, so there is A LOT more to come.  please keep in mind, these are from when i actually managed to get the camera out and shoot, so there are a lot of times when we were working that i didn't actually capture anything.  

from the moment we landed, we were fully there, fully IN CUBA!  diesel fumes on the tarmac, uniformed taxi drivers, and warmth from every direction.  we befriended nearly everyone we crossed paths with.  

miguel, who varun dubbed the "bob cannard of cuba," who makes his own charcoal in the most beautiful way.

some of the best meals we ate (not this one, actually) were in driveways and patios, with mamas cooking in the garages and serving us our platillos right there.

 the cars were really excellent.

the organiponico we sourced most of our stuff from was on the outskirts of havana, called alamar.  beautiful, beautiful produce.

jerry was fully consumed by sugar cane after our cod project at parsons.  

so much incredible produce.  amazing, amazing herbs!

there was so much eggplant, we all used it in our menus.

cuban children are the most beautiful children in the world.

i managed to avoid eating this noni fruit, which tasted like blue cheese.   UGH.

the cubans seem to have a really special relationship with onions.

this was the "animal farm" where we sourced the meat for our dinners.  when we stopped in to choose the animals for slaughter, they were throwing a birthday party for a family member, complete with a pig roast!

could she be any more beautiful?

unsurprisingly, turtle befriended every child we met, not to mention this horse!  and she got all of the girls to ride in the carriage with her.

artechef, the culinary institute where we taught a workshop.

 the herb delivery from alamar at the last minute was stunning.  made me feel so utterly at home in such a foreign place.

chef jerry.

so many incredible home gardens.

cooking our first dinner, at le chansonnier.

in what i think was perhaps the greatest feat of the trip, charlie and steve sullivan snuck into a government run bakery to bake bread for the dinners, with a mixture of flours we found in havana and some that steve brought, as well as some sorta scary cheese i got at the fancy grocery store.  steve had made the dough in his hotel room bath room, monitoring temperature and humidity as only a master bread baker is wont to do.

also, this photo is really washed out--the bread was gorgeous.

i became obsessed with the artist Guayasamín for multiple reasons, not least of which was the similarity of our names.  he was pretty incredible, though.

i think the best meal we ate, and this may be telling, was in chinatown, at the luna del oro.  it was insanely fun, especially after the elvis impersonating guitar player showed up to seranade us.

our favorite event was our "pop-up," where we took over a friend's fritura stand for the night and cooked food and gave it away to neighborhood folks.  we grilled chicken and onions and made a bunch of different kind of fritters.  it was by and large the most "real" experience we had.  we were all exhausted, and going a little looney, but it was fantastic.

we all laughed so much our cheeks hurt.

this woman has the most amazing voice ever.  she sells peanuts by singing an amazingly catchy tune, and everyday her outfit has a different theme color.  we fell in love with her.

there was an incredible amount of beautifully decrepit colonial architecture to take in.  so much beauty amongst the brokenness.  i came to feel like they couldn't exist independently.

sorting through beans.

on our last night we made it to a baseball came.  it was so alive, so lo-fi, so fantastic!

one week of food

my dad sent me an email that led me to search for this website about what people eat. i remember seeing hungry planet: what the world eats a couple of years ago at a friend's house, and being really interested by it. i wish i could post some of the photos for you here, but i can't figure out how to do it, so you'll just have to go over there and look.

make sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom. and look really closely at what they are eating and drinking (and all of the packaging). it's out of control.

for my parents and distant friends....

the farmhouse



deeann and glasses



olives



looking toward the ridge



rolling spanakopita



juj with spanakopita



ready to roll the pita



rolling pita



fried broccoli and artichokes



grilling eggplant



pounding the baba ghanoush



plating the tahchin



tahchin



salad and bean ragu



time to eat



at the table



kids at the piano



ross churning ice cream



tres with the pinata (for whom he cried)



zoe!