The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Permaculture tacos

Permaculture tacos

I wish I could give you a solid recipe for the paste I made Saturday because it's based on beans but even Mark found it delicious.  (Plus, all of the ingredients except the olive oil, salt, pepper, and walnuts are ripe on the farm right now).  But I mostly just put in some of this and some of that until the paste tasted right.  Here's my best guess on proportions:

Scarlet runner beans

Pureeing beansCook the beans, broth, peppers, thyme, and garlic in the chicken broth for about 20 minutes, until the beans are soft.  (Unfortunately, the brilliant color goes away and the beans turn gray at this point.)  Cool, then puree the mixture in the food processor with the other ingredients.  If you're smart, you'll blend up the tomatoes and walnuts first, but they worked out okay added in later.

Serving suggestion: Make little tacos out of Malabar spinach leaves filled with bean paste, chopped arugula, and thinly sliced tomatoes, red peppers, and edible-pod peas.  These can be eaten with one hand like a soft taco if you're careful not to overfill.  While this serving method is a bit time-consuming to prepare, it's pretty and fun for a special occasion!  Happy birthday, farm!



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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we tried scarlet runner beans this year, the pods took forever to shell and we had to get them started with a knife (cutting off one edge to open the pod) over an hours worth of work for 1/2 cup of beans. how do you shell scarlet runners, they had some of the thickest pods i have ever seen.
Comment by rebeca Mon Sep 15 15:00:16 2014
Rebecca --- I'll admit that I only shelled a cup, and did it on a weekend when I had plenty of time to play (and didn't time myself, although I think it took less than half an hour). I shelled them by hand, just broke off the ends to get started on opening as necessary. I'll probably save the rest of the beans to dry, which will probably make them much easier to shell.
Comment by anna Mon Sep 15 20:17:33 2014





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