If you eat a lot of beans, use dried beans instead of canned. Contrary to what you may have heard, dried beans do not have to be soaked overnight before cooking. However, they do need to be cooked for about 2 hours. How hard is that? It just takes some planning.
Consider this: 1 cup dried beans equals about 2 15-ounce cans of cooked beans. A 1-pound package of dried beans costs anywhere between $1.25-$1.99. I recently saw them for 77 cents a pound, sold loose in a bin. That is considerably cheaper than 4 15-ounce cans of cooked black beans, which range in price from about 79 cents (on sale) to $1.25 per 15-ounce can. Stored in the refrigerator, beans you have cooked yourself will last for about a week. Freeze any excess beans.
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