Note about old beans

Today our church "family" had a potluck soup dinner after church.  I was out of town until Saturday evening, and so I needed to whip up a soup from ingredients I had at home without a shopping trip.

Chili......that would be easy enough.  I have lots of pintos, ground beef in freezer, tomato sauce, and even some onions and peppers in the fridge.  No problem.  I got the beans soaking on LOW in my crock pot on Saturday night, took the ground beef out of the freezer, and got to bed.  

As the sun was rising this morning, I chopped and threw together the soup.  One of the glories of the crock pot is quick prep for a usually delicious meal.

As I checked my soup at about 7:00 am, the beans were still crunchy, even after soaking all night.  No big deal, there would be another good 5 hours for them to soften up deliciously during church on high.

Fast forward to 1:00.  My son chooses to eat my soup from the other 20 crock pot choices.  He says it is disgusting.  Lovely......

I say, "Let me try it," and sure enough, it is!  The beans are crunchy!  Oh no, how many people have nicely smiled through eating this soup?  I hope for the best that most will have NOT chosen my soup.  But sure enough, the crock pot is half empty (but not EMPTY!) at the end.  I tell my husband to hurry and grab it when the dinner is over, and get it out to the car.  The fewer people that know it was mine, the better!

No big deal, we will just keep it simmering and have a great evening meal for us.  

Fast forward to now, 7:00 pm.  The beans are STILL CRUNCHY.  I used some old pinto beans passed on to me from my mother's food storage.  So they probably have a good 20 years to them.  Beans do store well.

BUT, apparently they take much longer than 24 hours to turn soft.  Those beans just might be making into BEAN BAGS instead!