Cajun-Style Smoked Meat White Beans / Big Ol' Pot of Stupid
I consider myself an educated person. Every once in awhile I realize that educated and smart can part ways. You know those moments in your life when your stupidity becomes very apparent and any superiority you once felt is gone. Beans gave me one of these moments. How you ask? Well lets get into it.
Beans are a staple in Louisiana. So much so that Monday is pretty much reserved for them. One day I get a call from a friend freaking out because she had these little white things in her beans. Sorry for the mental image but they looked like maggots. Maybe it was her hysteria or the fact I had Mom brain in full effect but I was convinced they were maggots. Needless to say that pot of beans got thrown. Then, another Monday, another pot of beans, another appearance of these white pests. Pot of beans number 2 down. My friend placed a call to Camelia Beans. She was told that maybe it was an old bag of beans and they would gladly replace them. By the way I am sure this representative answering the phone probably was doing the regular customer service complaint call. Sure lady its our fault you have maggots in your beans because we don’t have a highly inspected factory and a staff that makes sure our product is safe for consumption. Camellia Beans is a staple here. I can’t even imagine the amount of beans they sell. Enough, I am sure that they never get that old at the factory.
Monday rolls around and it’s time for another try. You guessed it, there they were again. At this point it became beyond amusing to me. So much so that I started singing, “Just another Maggot Monday, oooooh wish it were Sunday” until I had fully annoyed everyone. So at this point, it does start to dawn on me that maybe this isn’t what we think it is. Time to make a phone call and see what the hell is going on.
I had a friend who not only was the son of an agriculturist he was also a avid cooking and nutrition nerd. As I start to describe the interlopers and the pounds of beans sacrificed he just burst into laughter. That laughter where the other person can hardly breathe and you realize that you have said something so ridiculously stupid you will now be a story they tell over cocktails for the rest of your lives. “Jolie are you serious? How many beans have you cooked and not noticed this?” There it is, that sinking feeling. Just get it over with so we can start the endless amount of times you will remind this and then burst into giggles.
Well folks, you now what it was? Not Maggots. It is part of the damn bean. It has a very technical name “radicle.” In layman terms the embryo, or new sprout. You know that part of the bean that grows a new plant. Here I am, a women who has planted beans, so apparently somewhere in my mind I know they are a seed that needs to sprout. I plant these beans so I can cook these beans, yet never noticed this tiny white part. Did I think rationally and research, of course not. Just straight to maggots , not once, not twice, but three damn times! I could have… I don’t know cut a bean in half to see if it was part, call someone who knows these things or use the elusive Google to find out. Nah, why do that? lets just keep spending hours to cook beans only to feed the neighborhood strays.
If your ever feeling dumb just remember I let a pot of beans make me look like a complete moron.
