Jenn's Bean Diaries, #1

Well before ~the virus~ became a thing, I used a delivery service for my restaurant supply. As a caterer, it's pretty normal. For a party of 50, I typically need one bulk can of garbanzo beans. It makes four quart-sized batches of hummus.

I was preparing for a gig and asked for one can along with everything else. Ten pounds of chicken, compostable plates, wheels of cheese. When the delivery person arrived, she was lugging a case of beans up the stairs.

"Whoa, did you charge me for a WHOLE CASE?"
"It scanned as one, I swear."



She handed me the receipt, I was charged $5.79 for garbanzo beans. My kitchen assistant Emily and I were slack-jawed, "At least we don't have to order more for a while, I guess??"

We dismissed it and moved about the day, prepping dishes, chopping this, slicing that. When it came time to make the hummus, I set Emily on it and I was looking at our production list.

"Jenn, these are black beans."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Black beans, these aren't garbanzo beans."

I walked over to look and sure enough, in a can labeled as garbanzo beans, dark purple aquafaba. Fuckin' black beans. We opened another can to be sure, yep, more black beans.

That's 6 pounds, 14 ounces of black beans per can.

In total, I currently possess 27.5 pounds of black beans.
440 ounces of black beans.
12.4 kilograms of black beans.
12473.79 grams of black beans.
0.013749999807 tons of black beans.

I dug the box out of recycling and looked at it. It says garbanzo beans. Somehow, this whole case and set of 6 cans were mislabeled. And even at the depot, it scanned as one can. This mistake goes all the way back to the bean factory!

Thoughts of returning the beans crossed my mind. But how strange would it be to return 4 cans when I paid for one, can I confirm they are black beans without opening them up? At the time, I decided to take the loss because who knows, I might need black beans.

I hate that I need these black beans. Now, I have zero catering gigs until the summer (hopefully they don't get canceled), I'm gonna crack one of these open and see how many different things I can make. It's like Chopped, but with only black beans and my existing pantry.

Welcome to my quarantine bean diary.

All bean diaries: One (You are here) | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six