It occurs to me....

It occurs to me that not everyone who reads this blog would have seen Anasazi beans.  These are beans that were grown by the people who lived in cliff dwellings in the Four Corners area.  The corners of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico meet at a spot indicated by a brass marker.  (Yes, I have been there and you can play a sort of hopscotch with feet in Utah and New Mexico and then Arizona and Colorado.  And, yes, I have done it.)

I cooked some for dinner last night and had enough for lunch today and dinner again tomorrow.  They are very simple to cook:  I picked them over to remove tiny stones and pieces of dirt, rinsed them and then soaked them over night.  The next morning I dumped them, water and all, into a sieve and rinsed them.  Then I covered them with fresh water, put a lid on the pot and simmered them until they were tender.  It is important not to salt them or put in anything acidic (like tomatoes) if you want them to become tender; those things can be added later.

Yum!

This is what they look like:

They are creamy white with dark purple markings.  No two beans seem to have exactly the same markings and the color changes when they are soaked, but aren't they pretty?