Bean Feast

Cassava and beans are the leading staple foods. They are often served for school lunch. Cassava is definitely an acquired taste!

We are in the middle of the bean harvest, and Helen has received baskets of beans (in their pods) from friends, who don’t want us to go short. In fact our fridge is half full of them, and after some weeks we have had enough!

The colourful beans are about 8 different types, each looking and tasting a little different. They are all planted and harvested together. If one type does badly that year, the others make up the loss. To store for next year’s harvest you dry the pods in the sun for a week, thresh them to get out the beans, keep them in the sun for further time (difficult in view of the daily heavy rain), then rub them with oil, and finally store them in earthenware. We consider ourselves semi-experts in beans!