This will be a growing/foraging/cooking column for the Chilkat Valley, using food that is easy to find locally and hopefully reasonably cheap.
For this first column though, it being winter, let us go with harvesting from the store.
Let us start with beans, one of the more basic foods.
Start with about a pound of dry beans of whatever kind you like. My preference from the store would tend to be small red or white beans, but they’re all great (black beans sometimes seem to take longer to cook).
You’ll also need a heavy-bottomed pot to cook them in.
So, here’s the basic recipe:
Spread out the beans on a tray and check over them to make sure there’s no small rocks or dirt (there never are nowadays, but I always check anyhow).
Then put them in a good-sized bowl or pan, cover them with a couple quarts of water, and leave them overnight.
Drain them in the morning.
Get a couple quarts of stock or water boiling in your pot, dump in the drained beans, add a chopped onion, lower to a simmer, cover and let simmer while you cook breakfast.
Then turn them off and leave them alone till you get home in the afternoon.
At this point they may or may not need more cooking, so finish if necessary. You now have the basis for a good dinner.
Good Bean Soup
To the nearly cooked beans add salt and pepper to taste.
If there is a lot of extra liquid I would tend to add a half cup or so of white rice for the last half-hour of cooking to soak it up.
I also like to add chopped vegetables, perhaps bell peppers, celery, more onion, and a can of tomatoes. I add chipotle peppers whenever possible.
You might like to scoop up the extra liquid and use it to cook rice separately, or just drink it — it will be delicious especially if you started with stock.
You now have a fat-free meal. Nobody will eat it unless you fix that.
You can add a half-pound of browned sausage or chopped bacon, or several tablespoons of butter. Also consider sour cream and cilantro.
To improve the protein content you can consider adding browned ground meat (one might also then add chili powder) or grated cheese. Or add a pound of stew meat at the beginning of the cooking process.
Notes:
1) Many people like to parboil the beans before starting the actual cooking. I no longer do that. It’s a nuisance, wastes nutrients, and doesn’t seem to me to have any effect on digestibility or cooking time. Try it and make up your own mind.
2) Of course you can just buy canned beans which are very useful to have on hand. Last time I checked though they ran around $5 a can, which is getting close to the price of ground beef and gives you considerably less supper than you would get for your similar investment in dry beans.
3) Split peas and lentils are cooked very similarly but the total cooking time will be about half an hour or so.
4) Beans freeze very well at any point in the cooking process. They also make great school or work lunches: heat them up perhaps with some leftover rice and send them along in a thermos. My favorite after-school snack when I was a kid was toast and cheese with warmed up leftover beans poured over.
Sally McGuire is a 40 year resident of the Chilkat Valley who raised four healthy children in Fairbanks and Haines on a budget, but always with an eye to real food and producing as much as possible of what the family ate. Her column Eating Well in the Chilkat Valley is a cooking column focused on making affordable meals with what’s local, seasonal and available at the grocery store.
Eating Well in the Chilkat Valley
This will be a growing/foraging/cooking column for the Chilkat Valley, using food that is easy to find locally and hopefully reasonably cheap.
For this first column though, it being winter, let us go with harvesting from the store.
Let us start with beans, one of the more basic foods.
Start with about a pound of dry beans of whatever kind you like. My preference from the store would tend to be small red or white beans, but they’re all great (black beans sometimes seem to take longer to cook).
You’ll also need a heavy-bottomed pot to cook them in.
So, here’s the basic recipe:
Spread out the beans on a tray and check over them to make sure there’s no small rocks or dirt (there never are nowadays, but I always check anyhow).
Then put them in a good-sized bowl or pan, cover them with a couple quarts of water, and leave them overnight.
Drain them in the morning.
Get a couple quarts of stock or water boiling in your pot, dump in the drained beans, add a chopped onion, lower to a simmer, cover and let simmer while you cook breakfast.
Then turn them off and leave them alone till you get home in the afternoon.
At this point they may or may not need more cooking, so finish if necessary. You now have the basis for a good dinner.
Good Bean Soup
To the nearly cooked beans add salt and pepper to taste.
If there is a lot of extra liquid I would tend to add a half cup or so of white rice for the last half-hour of cooking to soak it up.
I also like to add chopped vegetables, perhaps bell peppers, celery, more onion, and a can of tomatoes. I add chipotle peppers whenever possible.
You might like to scoop up the extra liquid and use it to cook rice separately, or just drink it — it will be delicious especially if you started with stock.
You now have a fat-free meal. Nobody will eat it unless you fix that.
You can add a half-pound of browned sausage or chopped bacon, or several tablespoons of butter. Also consider sour cream and cilantro.
To improve the protein content you can consider adding browned ground meat (one might also then add chili powder) or grated cheese. Or add a pound of stew meat at the beginning of the cooking process.
Notes:
1) Many people like to parboil the beans before starting the actual cooking. I no longer do that. It’s a nuisance, wastes nutrients, and doesn’t seem to me to have any effect on digestibility or cooking time. Try it and make up your own mind.
2) Of course you can just buy canned beans which are very useful to have on hand. Last time I checked though they ran around $5 a can, which is getting close to the price of ground beef and gives you considerably less supper than you would get for your similar investment in dry beans.
3) Split peas and lentils are cooked very similarly but the total cooking time will be about half an hour or so.
4) Beans freeze very well at any point in the cooking process. They also make great school or work lunches: heat them up perhaps with some leftover rice and send them along in a thermos. My favorite after-school snack when I was a kid was toast and cheese with warmed up leftover beans poured over.
Sally McGuire is a 40 year resident of the Chilkat Valley who raised four healthy children in Fairbanks and Haines on a budget, but always with an eye to real food and producing as much as possible of what the family ate. Her column Eating Well in the Chilkat Valley is a cooking column focused on making affordable meals with what’s local, seasonal and available at the grocery store.