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Saturday, March 13, 2010

Day 46 Dried Beans vs Canned and Tired, Tired, Tired


Deciding to buy dried beans or canned beans is an issue of space and expense. Dried beans will a little more than double their volume when cooked. So storage is about one third the space for the same nutrition. Expense is about 60 cents a pound for dried beans (6 cups cooked or 12 servings). Canned beans cost about 60 cents for less than three servings in a can. So the decision is between dried at 5 cents a serving and canned at 20 cents a serving. The convenience of canned beans is retained when a large quantity is cooked and then frozen plain in serving portions. I have loved having red, black and white beans all in the freezer these last 6 weeks. The freezer is almost as full as it was at the beginning of our 90 day journey because I have used meat but added beans. The beans came in handy for dinner tonight.

Breakfast: Ham, orange slices, leftover pancakes, fruit drink
Lunch: Macaroni and cheese (1 pound box of noodles cooked an drained, 1/3 pound of Velveeta cheese, 14 cup margarine with 1/2 tsp salt)
Snack: Snickerdoodle cookies and granola bars from the freezer
Dinner: We came in at 4:50 pm after running errands. I put water on to boil, added beef bullion, 3 cans of beef stew meat, 3 cups of diced tomatoes, and 1 quart on frozen black beans. While waiting for the soup to come to a boil, I made flat bread with garlic added. (Recipe in Recipes post) Within 25 minutes, dinner was ready from start to finish. The family found the soup simple, savory and "good."

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