Pinto beans are one of my staples. They are not a fancy bean, but combine with some onion, garlic and spices in an instant pot and i have delicious refried beans that can be eaten as is, or used in so many recipes.
I'll be honest, I sometimes get pretty lonely irl being pretty much the only vegan in my life. I tried to organise a vegan group in my city last year and basically everyone who expressed interest was either vegetarian or "flexitarian"/"99% vegan"/"whatever".
Hate to feel like I'm spoiling the mood of the place but feel like you all would understand better than anyone I know in real life.
I know the feeling. I lived in a suburban/rural American town and tried to start a vegan club and literally no one even showed up! I think this is the most relatable part of vystopia the book where she describes that it feels like we are on the forefront of something big but no one else is there even though it seems so obvious.
The communities are here to help share links and photos for vegans by vegans.
Vegan Home Cooks is a site for a discord server called Vegan Home Cooks Discord. This is a low-friction post-what-you-cooked community so we can share what we made today and talk about it, no recipes required. We want to provide motivation and encouragement for each other and show off what we made today.
Vegan Recipes is focused on how to cook and links to recipe sites.
Gardening is focused on our gardens, plants, hydroponics and learning how to do it. Some of us are pros and some are just learning and want to post what we're reading and what we're doing.
Art All things art, preferably by vegans but not required.
Book Club Our sort of monthly book club, we finished reading Fanon but never had our final post. We're going to get that going and do fiction for September/October. Also post about whatever you are reading!
DIY Do it yourself! This is a community to fix our shit.
Our communities are federated with various other servers running software called Lemmy. If you have an account on one of those servers you can still subscribe to our communities from your home server and participate. If you create an account with us you can also view other federated communities across multiple Lemmy servers we are linked up with.
Don't have much experience with beans, but I quite like black turtle beans. Still struggling with making them, though. The canned beans often fall apart and I haven't yet tried with dried beans, as those are quite the commitment to prepare. 😅
I never liked most bean offerings growing up... mostly lima, and anyways whisky overcooked. But I've gotten really into black beans in the last 10 years.
The best part is that they're stupidly easy to make with a pressure cooker.
1 cup of dried black beans, 4+ cups of your flavorful liquid choice, though be very careful to keep salt levels low! I generally sautee a shallot and an unreasonable amount of garlic before adding the beans. Then add some herbs (lazy style Italian blend) and the liquid.
45 minutes of high pressure (I think it's 12psi on an Instant Pot), natural pressure release. Strain/skin the liquid to remove any herbs or the like you don't want in the final product. Finally strain the liquid into a saucepan to reduce by at least half or until you get to a consistency you like.
I always have a large container of it in my fridge and it works for a lot of applications.
I do the same thing with the pressure cooker and use the same essential procedure for all beans. I cook them to that point then "re-cook" them into something else with even more flavor. Good choice