On the second Sunday of January, armed with a couple reusable grocery bags and a pocket full of cash, I made my way to the Hillcrest Farmers’ Market.  I planned to scour the stands for interesting ingredients that would provide me inspiration in the kitchen.   With a weeks worth of vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals to cook and no meal plans at the ready, I intended to buy anything that looked tasty and just hope for the best.

I came home with a whole chicken, a block of sage cheddar cheese from Spring Hill Cheese Company, the ingredients for guacamole, and a two-pound bag of dried Christmas Lima beans from Suncoast Farm.  It wasn’t exactly a week’s worth of ingredients, but it was a start.

As with most heirloom varieties, I had never heard of Christmas Limas, but I couldn’t resist giving the beautiful cream and burgundy colored beans a try.  I am a sucker for attractive packaging.

Native to Peru, Christmas Limas flourish in warm environments and are primarily cultivated throughout South America and the southwest United States.  Despite the cooler climate, they have also been grown successfully in the northwest United States.  My limas were grown in Lompoc, CA, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

My first attempt to prepare Christmas Limas did not go according to plan.  Since they are a bit larger than most of the other dried beans I had worked with, I wanted to give them an extra long soaking.  I intended to use them for my weekly “sister night” dinner so early Saturday morning I rinsed 1 ½ cups of beans and put them in a sprouting jar along with 4 cups of water.  After soaking all day, the beans had nearly tripled in size, coming within two inches of the top of the sprouting jar.  Before retiring for the evening I put the beans in fresh water and placed them in the fridge to hold.  Sunday afternoon I transferred them to a larger pot and continued to soak them until early evening.

The hour I allotted for cooking quickly became two, then three.  My patience wore thin as my family grew ravenous.  I was mortified by the beans stubborn refusal to soften, and resigned myself to serve my husband and sister a partial meal of chicken and amaranth.   Well into their fourth hour of simmering, the limas finally reached an edible consistency.

My less adventuresome sister ate her beans with a generous coating of butter, while my husband agreed to try the treatment I had intended – a sauté of limas, leeks, and lemon juice.  Not being a bean lover, he wasn’t thrilled with the results, but I was quite happy with the final outcome.  The giant speckled lima beans were silky smooth on the outside and deliciously creamy on the inside.  They had a sweet buttery taste like regular lima beans, but with a texture that puts their frozen green counterparts to shame.

In retrospect I realize that the extra long cooking time was my own fault.  While I had soaked the beans for an adequate amount of time, I had used a jar that was tall and thin, forcing the beans to fight against their own weight when expanding.  The beans on the top reached their full expansion, and cooked well, while the beans on the bottom had been too confined, requiring a longer cooking time.  I should have used a wide bottomed bowl to allow the beans to soak in a thinner layer.

Despite the hassle, working with dried beans can be extremely satisfying.  I love to watch the transformation from small hard rocks to tender meaty morsels, and feel genuine excitement when I stumble across an interesting heirloom variety.  While canned beans are convenient, they simply can’t compete with the superior taste, texture, and variety of dried beans.