Too Many Beans

Have you ever noticed how many kinds of beans there are at the supermarket?

Not just kinds of beans.

Brands of beans.

Black beans.

Pinto beans.

Kidney beans.

Cannellini beans.

Navy beans.

Great Northern beans, which sounds more like a regional railway with limited weekend service.

Then every bean has options.

Low sodium.

No salt added.

Organic.

Seasoned.

Unseasoned.

Spicy.

Refried.

Fat-free refried, which is kinda' like removing the one exciting thing from refried beans.

And then the brands start.

The expensive beans with beautiful farm to table labels.

The cheap beans that look like they were bade for a bunker.

The beans that want you to know they’re authentic.

The beans that want you to know they’re healthy.

The beans that are just sitting there quietly because they understand they’re fucking beans.

At some point, you realize you’ve been standing in the aisle for seven minutes trying to make the right decision about a 99-cent can of legumes.

This is what modern life’s become.

Every tiny choice shows up with a personality test.

It’s not enough to buy beans.

You have to select the beans that best represent your values.

Are you practical?

Adventurous?

Watching your sodium?

Trying to become the kind of person who knows what to do with cannellini beans?

The packaging doesn’t help.

One can looks like it belongs in a farmhouse kitchen owned by someone who makes soup from memory.

Another looks like it was developed in a wellness laboratory where nobody’s allowed to say the word “salt.”

A third has a smiling man on the label who appears to have dedicated his entire life to beans and would be disappointed to see you walk away.

You pick it up.

You read the ingredients.

Beans. Water. Salt.

You put it back.

You pick up another can.

Beans. Water. Slightly less salt.

Progress.

Some people probably know exactly which beans they want.

They walk into the store, grab two cans, and leave.

They don’t compare labels.

They don’t wonder whether organic matters more for beans.

They don’t stand there trying to remember whether navy beans are good in soup or if that’s just something they saw once in a tick tok.

I envy those people.

I stand there comparing sodium levels like the entire direction of my life depends on it.

But maybe the bean you choose does say something about you.

Black beans are dependable.

They go into burritos, bowls, soups, salads, and whatever meal you’re assembling after realizing dinner should’ve started twenty minutes ago.

They do the work.

They don’t need attention.

They’re the person in the group project who fixes everyone else’s mistakes and doesn’t mention it ever.

Pinto beans are relaxed.

They don’t seem worried about where the evening’s going.

Whole, mashed, refried—it’s all good.

Pinto beans have never cared about being anything other than a bean. Also theres a car named after them.

Kidney beans are intense.

They’re large, dark red, and named after part of the human body.

That’s a lot of personality for chili.

Kidney beans feel like they’d bring up something uncomfortable at dinner and then act surprised when everyone stopped talking.

Cannellini beans seem sophisticated, mostly because saying “cannellini” makes you feel like you know what you’re doing.

They belong in dishes described as rustic.

You don’t eat cannellini beans.

You fold them into something with wilted greens and top shelf olive oil.

Navy beans are small, pale, and oddly official.

They sound like they should come with paperwork.

Nobody seems completely sure why they’re called navy beans, but they’ve been around long enough that asking now would somehow feel rude.

Lima beans have suffered.

For generations, children have pushed them around plates as though the beans themselves were responsible for the meal.

They’ve become shorthand for bad vegetables despite not technically being vegetables.

That’s a difficult reputation to overcome.

Butter beans sound warm and reassuring.

They sound like something a grandmother would make when you looked tired.

They’re soft, comforting, and somehow older than every other bean in the aisle.

Garbanzo beans pulled off the greatest rebrand in bean history.

At some point, they became chickpeas.

Same bean.

Completely different energy.

Garbanzo beans sound like they come in a dented can from the back of the pantry.

Chickpeas get roasted with sea salt and served at restaurants where the water arrives in a glass bottle.

That’s branding.

Maybe we’re drawn to the beans we recognize in ourselves.

Maybe we choose the reliable bean because we’re tired.

Maybe we choose the obscure bean because we’d like to become someone who casually says, “I had some gigante beans left over.”

Maybe we buy black beans because they seem useful and then leave them in the pantry for eighteen months beside a bag of quinoa from a previous version of our personality.

The pantry becomes a museum of people we briefly intended to be.

Here lies the person who was going to make lentil soup.

Here lies the person who bought tahini and the person who believed dried beans were worth the planning.

Every few months, you find the can again.

You turn it over.

You check the date.

It’s still good.

Beans are patient.

They’ll wait while you forget about them.

They’ll wait while you order takeout.

They’ll wait through changes in jobs, relationships, apartments, and dietary intentions.

Then one evening, when there’s nothing else in the house, they become dinner.

Maybe that’s why there are so many beans.

They’re not really competing.

They’re waiting for different versions of us to eventually need them.

The organized version.

The broke version.

The healthy version.

The version who suddenly decided to make chili.

The version standing in the supermarket aisle, holding two nearly identical cans and trying to determine which one feels more correct.