Do you still have cookbooks? Do you use them?

[tishaLA]

70. It's the Rancho Gordo bean club

I spent like 3 years on the wait-list to get in. Every 3 months they send out 6 1lb bags of heirloom (dried) beans and it's been a revelation to me--i always thought I hated Lima beans because my mother used to buy frozen packages of them when I was a kid and they were mealy and tasted no bueno, but the heirloom limas, properly cooked, are just fantastic. And that's just one example.

The owner also has a thing called "Project Xoco" that supports small farms in Mexico by paying living wages to farmers, buying their beans, and helps keep scarce breeds from dying out (most of their beans are indigenous to Meso America.