Lima beans

It would probably be considered strange to most people, but in our family one of our traditional dishes to serve at Christmas time is garlic lima beans.

It is very interesting that lima beans originally come from Lima in Peru but they are not pronounced "leema" like the city in Peru, but rather the beans are correctly pronounced "lyma". Very strange...

Anyway, I made garlic lima beans as one of our dishes for tea last night and of course the kids are not extremely fond of them yet, but they will be soon... mwah hah hah. They all ate a decent serving spoon full without too much complaint. When I married Michael and he came to our first extended family dinner, he thought the lima beans were terrible, and couldn't believe we cooked them and served them as part of an extravagant feast. It did take him a few Christmas dinners of trying them out of politeness before he started liking them, and now he really loves them.

Of course, I just had to Google them, and discovered that lima beans are one of the healthiest foods in the world! They are extremely high in fibre, and they also help your body detoxify sulfites.

Lima beans have a starchy yet buttery texture and flavour (hence their other name - butter beans). When I was little, I was not too fond of them and thought they were too "floury". Now of course, I can't get enough of them. Although sometimes I do have a sneaking suspicion that it may just be the garlic, butter and salt that make them so delicious, and that even cardboard might be quite palatable if cooked this way...

Anyway, last night I cooked up a whole packet of them. First I soaked them in water for 6 - 8 hours, then simmered them for about half an hour. When they were done, I gently fried a heap of freshly chopped garlic cloves and salt, in olive oil. I stirred this fragrant mixture through the hot beans and added some butter to melt through (real butter of course) and heaped it all into a huge ceramic bowl.

We ate more than half of them last night (with baked chicken, noodles and cucumber salad) and there were still so many left, so I just covered the dish and popped them into the fridge.

Guess what I had for breakfast this morning?! ...Cold! ...Yum!

I do feel sorry for Alice and Paul who are coming to stay with us tomorrow... we will all smell so strongly of garlic!

Are there any other strange people in the world who actually choose to eat lima beans for pleasure?