Beans and legumes are nutritional wonders disguised in lowly form. Dried beans and peas, collectively known as pulses or legumes, are storehouses of concentrated nutrients, especially protein and dietary fiber.

Their nutritional endowment has to do with the fact that legumes are seeds; they contain all that is needed to reproduce themselves, along with enough nutrients to sustain the new plant until it can draw its own nutrients from the soil.

Legumes are unique because, nutritionally, they belong to both the protein and vegetable food groups. They have no cholesterol, are high in fiber, and are naturally low in fat. They are also good sources of a variety of minerals and antioxidants. When included in the diet, legumes can help reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers. They are a good choice for people who must control blood sugar, and a good option for a meatless meal. They are so healthful, in fact, that Walk Kansas team members are challenged this week to make three recipes with beans for the “Bean Power Mini-Challenge.”

The protein in legumes, like most vegetable products, is “incomplete,” lacking in one or more essential amino acids. However, this deficiency can easily be overcome by serving beans with grains, nuts, or a small amount of lean meat. These foods provide the missing amino acids to complete the protein.

In addition to protein, legumes are well-stocked with complex carbohydrates, B vitamins, and minerals such as zinc, potassium, magnesium, calcium and iron. In fact, a cup of cooked beans supplies about 25 percent of the daily value for iron for women, 40 percent for men. Eating foods rich in vitamin C along with beans helps to increase the absorbability of the type of iron in beans.

Legumes are second only to wheat bran as the best plant source of dietary fiber. Both types of fiber, soluble and insoluble, are present. Soluble fiber has been shown to help lower blood cholesterol levels and control blood sugar; insoluble fiber increases bulk, alleviates some digestive disorders, and may help to prevent colon cancer.
Beans and legumes come in a few different shapes and a rainbow of colors. Archaeological evidence shows that they are among the oldest agricultural crops, dating back perhaps ten thousand years. They have been found in Egyptian tombs and are frequently referred to in the Bible.

With their rich nutritional value and long history, beans and legumes are a wise food buy– the cheapest protein source of all with no waste. They are easy to cook, tremendously versatile, and they keep well.

There are many ways to add legumes to your diet. At the salad bar, add garbanzo and kidney beans; add lentils to spaghetti sauce; include beans and lentils when making soup, stew, or a casserole. Enjoy hummus as a snack with vegetable dippers and whole-grain pita bread or crackers, and spread on a sandwich or wrap. Prepare legumes as a side dish, and explore how other cultures feature beans by trying an ethnic recipe. You’ll find other ideas in the 33-page booklet “Cooking With Beans and Legumes” on our website at www.ellis.ksu.edu under Health & Nutrition.

If you kitchen bean vocabulary is limited to chili and bean dip for chips, then it’s time to learn more about the powerful punch packed by this humble food.

Linda K. Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.

I’ve heard some folks refer to cattle as hamburger on the hoof. With this reference in mind, the past few weeks have had me salivating as I think of all the luscious jellies out there still on the bush. Yes, each of those fragrant bee-attracting blooms is a bit of jelly still on the plant, and I can’t wait to harvest the fruits and heat up the kitchen.

In the past few weeks, this year’s currant bushes sported lovely, fragrant yellow blooms that promise tasty currant jellies, while hundreds of chokecherry bushes blossomed out hinting of savory, rose-red bliss. Unfortunately, the sand hill plums flowered early enough that a frost damaged many of their blooms. Despite the damage, I hope to harvest some fruits for the jelly pot.

I’ve kept an eye on the wild grape vines nearby, but I can’t tell whether to develop a hankering for wild grape jelly or not. Grapes are difficult to predict because the plant can set little clusters, but dry conditions can shrivel them before they become raisins or you have to beat wild creatures to them. Birds love the little purple fruits, so it’s a contest to see whether I can pluck these from the vine before my feathered neighbors eat them first.

I did have currants last year, but I also had free range chickens that quickly dashed any hopes of beating them to the harvest. I’d eyeball the deepening color of the round fruits each day, and by the time they reached picking perfection, my 30 some walking egg factories had gobbled them. I felt lucky to find a handful to toss in my salads by the time the chickens finished their feasts. This year I am down to three chickens, so perhaps I’ll get a bowl full of currants for jelly making.

Because a combination of early blooms, and late frosts, and droughts have wiped out all hopes of summer jelly making in recent summers, I’m watched this year’s plants with an eagle eye. Barring insect or hail damage, I’m hoping this year’s jelly making prospects look good.

Currently, no pun intended, scores of empty jelly jars occupy my pantry. Each container is a silent testament to my failure to harvest a single chokecherry or sand hill plum in recent years. If there were wild grapes, I didn’t find enough to amount to a pot of simmering purple brew.

My goal this summer is to harvest bowls of currants, buckets of chokecherries and hopefully grapes, with a pan of sand hill plums added as each fruit ripens at the right time. I intend to create a little magic with some simple ingredients such as Sure Gel and sugar added to my boiling fruit juices. At exactly the right time, I ‘ll pour the resulting ambrosia into empty fruit vessels, seal them, and let them jell. Then I ‘ll stack the results in front of my kitchen window to let the sun shine through until it looks like a cathedral window instead of my normal glass.

After enjoying the visual effects, I’ll share the goodies with family and friends all through the winter to savor summer’s flavors on our toast and biscuits.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

Combining the Greek words for “knowledge” and “rule,” epistocracy is “government by the knowledgeable.” Philosopher David Estlund from Brown University introduced the term “epistocracy” in his 2008 book “Democratic Authority.”

Imposing an intelligence requirement in order to vote may seem heresy to Americans. But throughout history, voting has been restricted, just as we still limit voting to age 18 and above. We recognize that a minimal amount of intellectual maturity is required to cast an intelligent vote, although there is evidence that youngsters do not make judgements independent of their parents until their early 20s.

Of course, the U.S. is a republic or representative democracy, but not a pure democracy where individual voters decide every policy and regulation.

In ancient Greek city states, those pure democracies excluded women and slaves.

In “The Case Against Democracy,” author Caleb Crain points out how “…Plato thought to entrust power to carefully educated guardians.” And he notes that John Stewart Mill provided a “more practical suggestion…give extra votes to citizens with university degrees or intellectually demanding jobs.”

Few writers reflect on the fact that at the founding of the United States, voting was effectively restricted to the educated elite. Voters were mostly landed gentry who could afford to educate their sons, the future voters. Women and slaves were excluded.

Crain reminds us: “In the United States, elites who feared the ignorance of poor immigrants tried to restrict ballots. …in the next half century the tests spread to almost all parts of the country. They helped racists in the South circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment and disenfranchise blacks, and even in immigrant-rich New York a 1921 law required new voters to take a test if they couldn’t prove that they had an eighth-grade education. About fifteen per cent flunked. Voter literacy tests weren’t permanently outlawed by Congress until 1975….”

The idea of limiting voting to those with a specified level of education opens questions that the average American never ponders. But following the U.K. Brexit vote and then the U.S. Presidential election, a flurry of columnists rediscovered Estlund’s epistocracy concept.

Philosophical ethicist Jason Brennan examined the Brexit decision last June: “Political scientists have been studying voter knowledge for the past 60 years. The results are uniformly depressing. Most voters in most countries are systematically ignorant of even the most basic political facts….”

Brennan asks: “Should we be ruled by the few or the many? What this amounts to is the choice between being ruled by the smart but selfish or dumb but nice…. If a king holds all the power, his decisions matter. He will likely use that power in a smart way, but smart for himself, rather than smart for everybody. Suppose instead we give everyone power. In doing so, we largely remove the incentive and ability for people to use power in self-serving ways at the expense of everyone else. But, at the same time, we remove the incentive for people to use power wisely. Since individual votes count for so little, individual voters have no incentive to become well-informed or to process information with any degree of care. Democracy incentivizes voters to be dumb.” Brennan is a professor at Georgetown University and discusses much more in his new book “Against Democracy.”

While our elections have stimulated discussions of the shortcomings of our form of representative democracy, none of these discussions examined Singapore where the level of education is the highest in the world and their elected leaders have all been highly educated intellectuals.

Many of my overseas colleagues in Asian countries are thinking twice about our U.S. democracy where gridlock and government shutdowns have been recent realities that would be devastating in Asia.

Economist Joseph Schumpeter characterized our representative democracy as where “electorates normally do not control their political leaders in any way except by refusing to re-elect them.”

This flurry of critical discussions should challenge the superficial political education we provide most students. It is time for our teachers to help students discuss and explore both the strengths and weaknesses of our system.
Since it is not right to impose an intelligence test in order to vote, our only recourse is to promote “government by the knowledgeable” through more education, both before and after graduation.