John Westfield

I'm a lifelong cooking enthusiast with a special love for strange and underused ingredients. I hope this blog helps open your mind to more of the wonderful edible treasures around us.

Are beans easy to grow?

Beans ( Phaseolus vulgaris ) are easy-to-grow annual vegetables. While you can speed germination of many seeds by soaking in water overnight, don’t soak beans before planting. Soaking bean seeds generally results in poor germination; instead, plant in warm, moist soil for best results in the garden. What are the best beans to grow? Bean …

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Why beans are hard to digest?

Beans contain a sugar called an oligosaccharide. Your body can’t digest it because you don’t produce the enzyme necessary to break it down. When undigested food particles (like oligosaccharides) enter the large intestine, they’re broken down by bacteria. One inquiry we ran across in our research was “Why do beans remain hard even after cooking?”. …

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Can beans make you taller?

Beans are very nutritional vegetables. They contain nutrition such as vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, folate and fibres. Consumption of beans helps in increasing your height as it contains high amount of proteins. Here are 11 foods that can help make you taller or maintain your height. Beans Beans are incredibly nutritious and an especially good source …

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Why are jelly beans shiny?

So let’s not beat around the bush: Jelly beans are shiny because they’re coated in shellac, which is a resin that’s secreted by the female lac bug ( laccifer lacca) after it drinks the sap of trees. Beetle poop is the secret ingredient that makes jelly beans shiny. The FDA calls this “shellac” and not …

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What do beans grow on?

Beans come from inside bean pods, and can grow on two types of plants: traditionally they grew as vines, which need external support, as they can grow very tall. In more recent years, smaller ‘ bush beans’ have been cultivated, which are more practical as they don’t require any additional support. Underneath the large, hard …

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Which beans grow fastest?

Bush bean varieties tend to be the fastest-growing beans. Varieties like ‘Topcrop’ and ‘Contender’ can be harvested in as little as 48 days, notes the University of Arkansas. There are two types of bean plants: pole beans and bush beans. Of these, the quicker growing is the bush bean. What is the fastest growing bean …

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