Beans, beans, beans. The wonderful thing about beans, they're bursting at the seams...with fiber and flatulence, and mighty protein blocks.
This post should actually be titled "I'm terribly bored at work, so I'm blogging about nothing". Or "What to Write About". It's fun to let words flow stream-of-consciousness style. I hope, though, that I eventually develop some theme for this blog. So with nothing on my mind particularly today, I guess I'll just write about beans.
This was prompted by someone coming by my desk to ask if they could borrow a bowl to eat beans out of. And I simply love beans so I'm glad to spout off about them. Not too long ago (actually almost two years to be exact), I made a lovely little slide deck on beans for someone dear to me. This presentation explored the awesome variety of beans and related legume plants on our planet. To my great joy, the legume family includes beautiful and mighty trees, even if they do not spawn the fruit. Such wonders as the acacia, mesquite, and mimosa trees are part of the bean family.
Beans fix nitrogen, a process where "molecular dinitrogen (N2) is converted into ammonia NH3". Beans, and some other plants, have a symbiotic relationship with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Rhizobia bacteria are in the root nodules of legumes, helping the plants grow and compete with other plants. When legumes die, their nitrogen is released into the soil and made available to other plants, helping them grow.
According to Wikipedia, most beans today originate from the Americas. The greatest exporter of beans is India.