Dried Beans

I love beans and peas; all types of beans and peas, but most of all fresh beans and peas. I grew up on pinto beans, blackeye peas, crowder peas, field peas, snap beans, string beans, speckled butter beans, lima beans, and just about any other kind of bean or pea grown in East Texas. In season, we had them fresh, out of season either home-canned or store bought, but one dish you would see at every dinner and supper (we didn't have lunch in 1950s East Texas) was beans and/or peas, and usually more than one variety. I've even had them for breakfast, and still do for that matter.

One of the great disappointments I've had living in Panama is the limited selection of fresh beans and peas. I find string beans, pink beans, chick peas, and a couple of varieties of chinese beans and peas, and that's about it. It's enough to drive a Texan nuts.

Dried beans and peas offer a much better selection, though still missing many of my favorites, but if you just put them in a pot and cook them, the flavor is unmistakably dried. This, of course, has led to a lot of experimentation on my part, and I discovered years ago that soaking them overnight helps to restore the fresh flavor, something my grandmother knew, but neglected to pass on to me.

When I posted my dried beans cooking method on one of the Yahoo groups, Rheinhild informed me that soaking overnight was no longer necessary, and the same effect could be achieved by microwaving the beans first. To say that I met this suggestion with scepticism would be an understatement, but I long ago discovered that I don't know everything, so gave it a try. The first attempt resulted in a pot of beans that cooked more quickly, but still had the dried beans flavor. After a bit of experimentation, I settled on the following method for pinto beans.


Cooked this way, pintos taste more like fresh than dried. Some microwaves are more powerful than others, so you may have to adjust the times.

Our New Digs

It seems like it took forever, but we are finally moved into the office in Casco Viejo. There were more than a few bumps in the road, and a couple of minor items still to be attended to, but we do have A/C and telephones and internet. Expect to hear a lot more about Casco Viejo as I find time to explore.

Communications Problems

Soon after our office space was complete, Nora went to Cable and Wireless and applied for a telephone and internet connection. After several days she got a call that something was wrong with her application, and the sales person was a bit evasive. After a couple of days of hemming and hawing, she was told that there were no more lines available. She then went to the building owners who inquired of C&W if they had put in the new cable to their building just for show. On Nora's subsequent visit to C&W, they were unable to find any trace of her application, so she jumped through their hoops again, and within a week we had our telephones and internet  connection.

Movistar Internet

One of the possible solutions we looked at for our now resolved communications problems in Casco Viejo was a Movistar wireless internet account. Their system uses a PCMCIA card that connects into the cell phone system, and theoretically offers almost unlimited coverage wherever there is Movistar cell phone coverage. At $39.95 per month and unlimited bandwidth (as advertised) it seemed a fair deal and a way to resolve the problem with Cable and Wireless. As often proves to be the case, the bait dangled on the website (unlimited bandwidth) turned out to be very limited indeed. The monthly fee covers only 1 GByte of downloads, and every MByte after that costs $1.35. I could easily exceed that bandwidth cap in one day, so it's clear that the wireless mobile internet connection is suitable only for sending and receiving email and a limited amount of web surfing.

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