Bean counter

On Mondays I like to get something in the Crock Pot to treat myself well and ease myself into the week. Today I have something extraordinary.

It is the 16 Bean Soup Mix!

All beans have gone way up in price and I will not even get into that. Even a pound of lentils runs $1.19 or $1.29 a pound. Other foods have come back down in price but oh, those dried beans, they want to stick you on those. Beans tripled in price and they are staying there.

The good news is, for the $1.79 or whatever you are shanghaied into paying for the 16 Bean Soup Mix, you are getting a real work of art.

Are you still allowed to say you are shanghaied or is that politically incorrect?

Perhaps you are insulting the people of Shanghai.

Back to the beans. Howard said, "I couldn't even name 16 beans."

I am going to try! Ahem. Black beans, white beans, pink beans, kidney beans, lentils, split peas, cranberry beans, pinto beans. What am I up to? Seven. There are still nine beans to go!

Adzuki beans. I have not had them but they are in all my snobby cookbooks. Soybeans. Mung beans. Has anyone ever had mung beans? I have only had mung bean sprouts. Remember my kitchen sprout garden? The instructions suggest mung beans, as if, doesn't everyone have them lying around? I have never actually seen them, not even in Oriental, I mean Asian, markets.

Lima beans. A bean I love! Fava beans. Fava beans are huge so I do not know if they are in the 16 Bean Soup Mix. But we will count them anyway.

Now we are at 12. I am trying to imagine the Goya aisle at Budwey's. I am trying to think what I am missing. Cannellini beans. They are white kidney beans. That is 13. Roman beans! I bought them once.

Three beans to go!

Instead of saying simply split peas we can include yellow and green splits. That brings us up to 14. We are still missing two! Can you count green and black lentils? If you can then there you are.

You have to love how the ordinary brown lentil is always sneered at. The German lentil, it is sometimes called. Cookbooks sniff, oh, it is better if you have the green lentils. To tell you the truth I have had the green lentils and I do not see the big deal. The black lentils, now, those are delicious.

I could talk about beans all day! It is getting like talking about Leonard Pennario.

I do not know if I should count those separate lentils. In which case I still have those two beans to go.

Two beans.

I might have to cheat and check the package.