Here is the latest addition to our list of powerful foods. This is Gigante beans originally from Greece. It is a bean 4 to 6 times larger than the regular bean, depending on whether it is soaked or not.
While I am not a big fan of focusing on the nutritional content of different types of foods as the first selling point, I do make exception for this. A mare one cup/36 grams provides you with 52% of your daily requirements of fiber, the highest I have come across. It is not by accident that I started with fiber, I have become quite curious about microbiome and its implications to our health. One scientist said that we are 1% DNA and 99% microbiome, strictly going by the number of each in a human body.
My biggest attraction to food is first whether it causes any harm to the body, its story and favor as combined set of parameters, and last but not least its nutritional content.
This bean is a favorite amongst Greeks and anyone who knows me personally or literally knows my fascination with Greek mythology, philosophy and drama.
This bush bean has a very smooth and creamy flavor that adds a lot of character to any sauce or just cooked as a main dish.
We are delighted to have this bean growing amongst cool and exotic crops in my ancestral village. It’s a perfect fit as I too write the stories of the villagers of my youth as titans, philosophers and masters of food justice. I have never shied from expressing my disdain at the disappearing mastery of food, creativity and stewardship of the land. The food culture has become blant, boring and neocolonial.
If you are interested in planting thing amazing bean we have named Zion, you don’t need to make a sacrifice to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, grain or harvest. You just need to salute the ThayũCulture farmers of Gathĩngĩra and you too will be in possession of this portion from ancient times via the budding capital of Afro Flavors of Justice. We even have our own leaves for a crown for our heroes from a plant known to our forefathers as Gĩtiga Akũrũ ( meaning forever).
How appropriate for a farm that is the home of Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine to be in possession of this futuristic plant that our ancestors perceived as having the very spirit we endeavor to embody? The Greeks so priced the leaves of the olive tree that they used them to make a crown for the winners of the Olympics games. In the early days of those games, the crown was an award enough for the hero’s, besides have free food for the rest of their lives for Athenian Greeks.
You may wonder why this plant, whose English name is not even important to us as this is spiritual matter. That my ancestors were aware of the humanistic culture of having what I call a social system where the consumption of a farmers food without carrying wasn’t a crime. In that sense, everyone in those early days before the colonial era was a like a Greek champion with access to food all their life.
The name Zion also betrays our keen interest in the element of justice. The name Zion according to Greek mythology was a river that was formed after Persephone,the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, was abducted by this uncle and taken to the abode of the dead called Hedes. Demeter had left Persephone in the care of a nymph while attending to the needs of farmers in Spring just in time for planting. The nymph which had been left in charge of Persephone cried so much until the tears flowed like a river. That river was known as Zion. Karumo is our local version of the symbolic river that carries the tears of our village as it fights against the capture of the soul of our food sovereignty and taking by the globalist , the modern day Hedes.
The work we are doing with the soil and the plants has been with us for ages and our solemn duty is to make sure the Afro futuristic flavors, stories and by extension the microbiome and DNA will be forever.
Depending on when you come, you just might catch the goddess whose sweat, from the labor of love, inspires the constant flow of our beautiful stream next to our farm known a karurumo. I love that the bean of Zion is white like the ceremonial white paste known ira to our ancestors. Ira was believed to have protective properties. The name our ancestors gave Karuruma indicates a small water fall. The soft sound of this stream makes an unmistakable feminine sound of the modern day daughter of our ancestral mothers. These daughters are as rare as a Blue Moon. But there are there, and Gathĩngĩra boasts one of her abodes. That’s why it’s a perfect abode for the bean Zion.
As I reminisce about Zion Train, the one album with a theme of resistance by Bob Marley blasting the waves of this very space and interwoven with the soft sound of Karumo in days of my youth, I can see the connection between the Zion as a train and Bean of Zion and the stream coming with justice our way.
ThayùCulture