The Great Bean-capades

Ok, so here's the rundown. A friend was telling me about how fun it is to have canned beans around the house, and how you just take dried beans, soak them, and then a couple steps later you have quarts of cooked beans. Well, there was a little more to it that than, but it was still fun.

I looked it up in my cookbook and had a recipe for what was supposed to be 7 quarts (just enough to fit in my new canner), and it took 5 pounds of dried beans, which sounded fine to me. So, I weighed the beans, and then had to figure out how many cups of beans that was. 5 pounds of beans = 15 cups of beans. Then I needed to wash and rinse all the beans, and then cook them a couple of times (to do the quick rehydrate instead of the overnight soak). To do that you need 3 cups of water for every 1 cup of beans. Let me sum that up - 15 cups of beans, and 45 cups of water. It took 3 big pots to soak them and cook them.
After all the cooking, soaking, and waiting, it was time to put the beans in jars. I don't know where they got their measurements in my cookbook, but 5 pounds of beans, is enough for 14 quarts, not 7. So then I had to bust out the other canner, and run 2 canners of beans. (pictured below)
And here is the finished product - 13 quarts of pinto beans. Now we can just pop them open and use them to make bean soup and stuff anytime. Long messy process, but fun!

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little episode of the great bean-capades! :) Alicia