Oops, I Did It Again! - Rancho Gordo Bean Club

I must confess - all this simple eating we've been doing lately that includes beans, like Mary's Bean Stew and refried beans over sweet potatoes, even the munching of plain garbanzo beans as a snack during Jeopardy sometimes, made me think about all the dried beans in my pantry. When I make the stew again tomorrow, I plan on using my Crockpot right at the start, and I'll be using one the bags of Ranch Gordo's Yellow Eye beans I have leftover from the last time I belonged to their Bean Club.

Since the stew, I also made up a batch of garbanzo beans, and another batch of Good Mother Stallard but plain, not as a stew or anything.

And I kept thinking of rejoining that bean club, but every time I checked for the past few months it would be "sold out" and not taking new members.

And then the other day I got a link to this article about Steve Sando, the founder and owner of Rancho Gordo:

The Hunt for Mexico’s Heirloom Beans
Rare varieties discovered by Rancho Gordo’s Steve Sando have turned the humble legume into a gourmet food.


OK, I took it as a sign from above, and went right to the Rancho Gordo web site store, where - Lo and Behold! - the Bean Club was, indeed, reopened to new customers! My husband said to go for it (One of his favorite phrases lately), and I signed up again. This is the third or 4th time I signed on to the Club. I LOVE the beans I usually get, except I really dislike lima beans of all varieties, and it seems they would always have a bag of some type of lima bean in the quarterly boxes. Eventually I would have something like 6 bags of lima beans in my bean box in the pantry and I would get so frustrated I would just cancel the whole club. I wish there was a way to tell them NOT to send lima beans.

Sorry about that rant, but I really do dislike lima beans. But just so you know, notice that each mention of them is a link to one of the many varieties of lima /runner beans they sell. I can be a little silly like that.

Anyway, while there I also put an order in for one bag each of 6 different varieties of beans that they sell, beans that were never included in the old Bean Club orders I had received. One of the things about this club, both good and bad, is that the bean offerings changes as beans become available and go out of stock. My all time favorites, that Good Mother Stallard I use in many bean recipes, frequently goes out of stock, so I'm perpetually on the waiting list for it, and when available, hang the price, I order at least 10 more bags of them. It's been a while now since my last order of those beans, and I have only 3 bags left in the closet. The Yellow Eye I'll be using tomorrow is no longer offered, so even if I fall in love with it, unless Steve can find a new grower, it's gone. A hazard of heirlooms, I guess.

So, any day now I expect an email with the tracking number of those beans, and if lucky, another email telling me the first box from my club subscription is on the way. 

And I'm glad I jumped in and ordered the Club when I did - it's now listed as "out of stock" again.

It's also a good thing the weather is approaching temps high enough to open windows again (We had frost warnings the other night! In mid-April! AFTER the last-frost date!), because once those beans get here . . .