I met someone at a conference who farms in Suffolk and grows field beans, so I arranged to buy a whole load from him! (We were served field beans for the conference lunch and they were really nice spiced up – a slightly coarser texture than haricot or cannellini beans, and they are brown, but they tasted good! Apparently they are grown in this country for export to Egypt. Amazing!) Anyway, Glen sold me 10kgs at 50p per kilo, which is amazingly cheap. (They would clearly normally cost more – organic chick peas cost £1.65 per half kilo at Arjuna, cannellini beans £1.55, butterbeans £1.26 and puy lentils cost £3.80 for one kilo.) It would be good to be able to buy in bulk and share them out with whoever is interested. I’m distributing some of these – let me know if you want some! (The skins are a bit tougher than the beans we are used to, but I find them fine to eat.)
Pulses: a tasty and cheap (and low-carbon!) source of protein!
I think I am going to be eating a lot of pulses during these four weeks – luckily I really like them. They are so much cheaper than meat (except liver, which cost about 70p for the portion I had today! I can’t understand why liver is not more popular – I like it better than steak if it is sliced very thinly and fried very briefly with onions. It’s amazing that it often gets used as dog food.)
I was surprised when I first found out that eating imported pulses was actually lower in greenhouse gas emissions than eating local beef. (The pulses come slowly in large container ships and the cows emit a lot of methane, however low-carbon they otherwise are.) That’s why, as an omnivore, I try to eat meat no more than four meals per week and also why I prefer local wild rabbit and pigeon, as they are practically zero-carbon and shot as pests by farmers.
Posted by Bev