Please note: This is part of a series of reviews we are doing on food storage, emergency prep, and self-reliance type books. For more reviews click here.

Country Beans New ideas for “User Friendly Beans” in a hurry by Rita Bingham

Background: Learning how to use and cook dry beans was a major journey of mine last year. I was always skeptical you could do anything with dry beans before embarking on my “learn how to use beans” journey. If you’ve followed us for awhile, you probably were there when I made the “Magical Fruit” discovery on how to use dry beans to make cream of chicken replacements, and when I finally learned how to actually COOK dry beans. Most of my bean discoveries and learnings have come from the fabulous book “Country Beans”.

What I Liked: What I liked most about this book is how all-inclusive, and simple it is. Rita doesn’t assume that you’re an expert chef and gives you a lot of background information. Most of the time, when I get cookbooks I think to myself “Oh that recipe looks good, but I’ll have to go grocery shopping for half those mystery items”. When I opened the book and started looking at the recipes, I had a ton of them immediately tagged as recipes I could make right away. Rita also includes hundreds of GLUTEN-FREE recipes in this book. Using bean flours is a great way to replace gluten in a lot of recipes.

Sections: This book has more than recipes. It is full of information about using, storing, and cooking beans as well. Here are the sections the book contains. There are so many sections I’m going to do a screen shot of them because typing them out would take forever! Notice all the fabulous sections at the end! When I got this book I really needed education, not just recipes so it was great!

Feedback: The only drawback of this book is that there aren’t pictures for the recipes. Some people will only get books with pictures, but I felt like I didn’t really need the pictures with this book.

Summary: Quit being afraid of using your beans and get this book! “Country Beans”

-Jodi Weiss Schroeder
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net