Beans, Beans...

I've been working on my three-month food storage lately. For those of you who don't know - that's 90 dinners. I am trying to find space to store enough ingredients to make 15 meals SIX times.

One of my favorite recipes calls for three different types of canned beans. In order to make the soup six times, it takes EIGHTEEN cans of beans - that's a lot of shelf space.

So I decided to try to be smart and find out how to switch out the canned beans for dry beans.

Here's what I discovered:

• 1 can of beans is about 1/2 cup of un-cooked dried beans
• 18 cans of beans equals about 9 cups of dried beans.
• Dried beans can be used for up to 30 years if stored properly. http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7798-1-4224-1,00.html
• There are about 12-13 cups of dry beans in a #10 can.
• Just because you STORE the dry beans - doesn't mean you can't USE canned beans. :0)

I thought I'd share that in case anyone else is trying to store tons of food in not-so-tons of space.

Here's some great charts on exchanging dry beans:
http://whatscookingamerica.net/driedbeantip.htm