Switching from canned to dried beans was one of the first things we did in our effort to reduce eating processed food. Most people do not really think of canned beans as processed food, but any item that has been cooked to death in large quantities and then mixed into a viscous high sodium liquid to increase shelf life is suspect in our opinion.

Besides once you have tasted dried beans you cook yourself, its hard to imagine going back to canned beans, the difference is taste is that distinct. Not to mention using dried beans is so simple to do, environmentally sound (no more cans!) and cost-effective. You’d pay $.75 to $1.75 range for a 15.5 oz can of beans, depending on the brand, organic/non-organic, etc. Compare that to buying a bag of dried beans by weight. We typically buy organic dried beans from the bulk bins at our co-op or at Whole Foods and the average cost is $.90 to a $1.00 per pound. It takes about half a cup of dried beans to make 15.5 oz of canned beans.

Like most other DIY food projects, using dried beans requires a bit of advanced planning. Typically we soak ours the night before the day we plan to cook with it. Ideally, I would suggest soaking them on a Saturday evening, cooking them on Sunday and using them just like you would your canned beans during the week. Just remember the beans you cook yourself are not in any gooey high sodium liquid to extend their shelf life indefinitely, so you have to make sure to use them within a day or two.

And how do you cook dried beans? Soak them overnight in water (3 cups for every cup of dried beans) and cook them in the same water to bean ratio. Make sure to add some salt to the water when cooking, just like you would for pasta. You will need to adjust the amount of salt you add to your dish accordingly. You know it is done when the beans are no longer crunchy. This could take half hour to an hour depending on the type of beans as well as the soaking time.

Once you have these infinitely better tasting beans ready, there is so much you could do with them. Take your pinto beans a step further and make refried beans, or try one of the bean burger recipes on Vino, or do your own thing. The possibilities are endless….

Oster Citrus Juicer: $25, 10 lb bag of locally grown Valencia oranges: $5, the taste of freshly-squeezed orange juice: PRICELESS! I am so over paying $7.99 for Evolution or Naked Juice, not to mention the plastic container I have to recycle each time. I understand not everyone may think this to be a good use of their time, but I am perfectly happy spending 20 minutes every other weekend cutting and squeezing the oranges. The 10lb bag yields enough to fill a 57 ounce jug, a tall glass and then some. And once you have tasted freshly squeezed orange juice there is no going back.

For those of you who know us, you know how important matters related to food are to us. And for those of you who don’t, heck we have a food blog− that should tell you how obsessed we are about what we eat! The last few years have seen us become more interested in where our food comes from. We have been influenced by the Slow Food Movement’s emphasis on eating good, clean and fair food and have embraced the philosophy Michael Pollan puts forth in his book, In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

We buy our produce exclusively from our local farmers market or grow it at my garden. Every weekend, we plan our meals for the week. We always take leftovers for lunch the next day. We plan a non-vegetarian meal no more than once a week. I’m not trying to show how amazing we are (we know that already ), just that we are making an effort to practice the food ideas we consider to be important. Yet, we feel like there is so much more we could do to eat responsibly. Once you really start thinking about what you eat and why you eat the way you do, you start looking at food very differently.

One of the main things we are trying to achieve in our attempt to eat responsibly (and as a byproduct, healthily as well) is to reduce the amount of processed food in our diet. Adit and I got here with different but related motives in mind. Since we only buy produce at the farmers market or grow our own, Adit wanted to take that further by minimizing the amount of processed foods we buy. I approached this with more of an environmental goal in mind− I was keen to minimize the amount of packaging we disposed. Sure, many bottles and containers are recyclable, but if I can REDUCE my consumption then I would have less to RECYCLE in the first place.

So began our DIY food project: when we put down items on our grocery list we began to think about whether we could make it at home. As we make more items from starch or cut out others from our diet, the project became a part of our daily routine and therefore, simpler. We became less mechanical about reaching out for cans, bottles and containers at the grocery store aisles. In the weeks to come, we hope to document here the various DIY food projects that we have undertaken, both successful and otherwise. We won’t argue that this is easy, but we will argue that the taste and satisfaction that comes from eating these things is worth it for us.