Ba-Ba Black Bean

The other night, I decided that it was time to harvest all of our black bean pods. After picking and placing the pods into a large kitchen mixing bowl, and grabbed one of our left over mason jars, and sat down next to my wife on our couch. As we began threshing, or shelling each pod, our daughter decided she wanted to help. Setting herself up on the arm of the couch, she bean copying our actions. Taking a pod from the bowl, pinching the bottom end, and pulling the string toward the top of the pod, she successfully unzipped the seam. Slitting each unzipped pod open with her tiny fingers popped each bean from its birth, depositing it into the jar. By the end we had shelled enough beans to fill the jar three quarts of the way full. What a fun way to spend time with my family.

Over the next few days we dried the beans in the sun. We found it so entertaining that by the end the beans had reduced to fill only about a quarter of the jar. This has really given us an appreciation for the vast number of bean pods required to yield enough beans to bill any of the bags we can purchase at the store.