Probably less, yeah. Do you get them from the hopper style that drops from the bottom, or bins you scoop from?

If hopper I’d expect you to catch some sometimes because they settle down to the bottom, but if you scoop them from the top of bins I think it’s pretty unlikely you’d ever find any.

Your day may come. Be vigilant! Best to find them on the counter than in your mouth. Some brands, or bean types, have a lot more than others. Black and red beans have had the most for me, in that order. It sucks because it’s harder to spot the rocks in the black beans, too.

Yeah I find them more often in brands from foreign foods sections. Often times they’re better quality beans for a lot cheaper though!

I’ll take the couple minutes to scan for rocks if it means I’m getting better beans any day of the week. Fucking love beans, haven’t ever met one I don’t like.

Nice! Maybe I’ll try that. What else did you have in the pot?

Sure!

TLDR: mirepoix, garlic, ground mustard, ground thyme, basil, salt, pepper, bacon

I cut a pack of decent quality bacon into strips and start it a sizzlin

Then, dice equal parts carrot, onion, and celery (mirepoix) while the bacon is cooking

I crank the heat and sautee the mirepoix in the pan with the bacon, then I add the beans with the soak water and some salt (don’t go crazy, the bacon has salt too, and I add cheese at serving also)

Bring to boil and then reduce to simmer until the beans are mostly cooked, stirring and adding water as needed.

When things are cooked pretty well throw in a diced tomato (or a can), a bulb of crushed garlic, ground mustard, dried basil, and ground thyme. Let it cook a bit until the flavors develop, then adjust seasoning, salt, pepper etc. Sorry I don’t have measurements, I eyeball everything. I cook the soup a long time so by the end it will stick if you don’t stir fairly frequently because the lentils and some beans have dissolved. I like the soup thicc so that also contributes to it sticking.

The thyme and basil are the stars here, the thyme especially.

I usually eat it with some rice and some grated Monterey Jack cheese on top.

I use jasmine rice and put a small amount of olive oil in the pan, then crush a garlic clove per cup of rice I’m cooking and sautee gently (don’t burn it!) as soon as the garlic has cooked a bit I add a cup of dry rice to the pan and stir it around real good, add the water, and salt it. Rice should not be bland, motherfuckers!

I think it was more of an issue when I was younger for sure, but I still find them occasionally. I eat a ton of beans though.

Lots of bags of dry beans have rocks. Little black pebbles usually, like coarse sand.

Some brands have them more often than others but you can easily break a tooth on them so I always toss them on the counter and scoot them around to check.

They don’t. As I said in another post, the lentils break down first so it gets ugly but it’s nice and thick.

I’ve never pressure cooked them, just soak overnight but that might be a way to cook them without stirring too much, and keep the lentils formed correctly.

I dunno, the way I do it is a favorite so I’m not experimenting any more.

I fucking love these.

I just throw the seasoning packet away, never used it at all. Just use the bean mix itself, it’s really good, HOWEVER be aware that some of the “beans” are actually lentils, and they break down into a mush faster than others.

If you cook the beans a long time in your soup as I do then it gets REALLY bad looking. We call it “ugly soup” because it’s ugly AF but DELICIOUS.

Edit: I’ve NEVER found a rock in these also, not once in the dozens of bags, maybe hundreds, I’ve used.

I’ll caveat this by saying that I detest gerrymandering and think it’s one of the roots of the decline of the US political systems.

That being said, I’m going to answer a question you might not have even asked with a bunch of information that doesn’t answer things better than “it’s complicated.”

The easiest “fair” way to divide up districts is based on equal polygons (say squares that are XX miles/km on an edge, for simplicity’s sake). The issue is that this doesn’t take into account population gradients due to terrain and zoning, or cultural/ethnic clusters. So, on its face it looks reasonable but you’ll end up with districts that cover a city with 1 million people of diverse cultural makeup standing equal with a district of 1000 people that are culturally/ethnically homogenous. Not actually fair.

So, you can try to draw irregular shapes and the next “fair” way to try and do that is to equalize population. Now you quickly devolve into a ton of questions about HOW to draw the districts to be inclusive and representative of the people in the overall area you’re trying to subdivide.

Imagine a fictional city with a cultural cluster (Chinatown in many American cities for example), a river, a wealthy area, a low income area, and industrial/commercial areas with large land mass and low resident populations.

How do you fairly draw those lines? You don’t want to disenfranchise an ethnic minority by subdividing them into several districts, you might have wealthier living on the river, you might have residents with business oriented interests in the industrial areas AND low income… It quickly becomes a mess.

A “fair” districting can look gerrymandered if you’re trying to enfranchise separate voting blocs in proportion to their actual population.

The problem is that politicians play this song and dance where they claim they’re trying to be fair (until recently in Texas where GOP said the quiet part out loud and just said they want to redraw lines to get more seats) but in reality they are setting up districts that subdivide minority blocs into several districts that disenfranchise their voting interests.

It’s disgusting, it’s a clown show. But none of OPs photos are representative of what a good district looks like, because every location is different and there’s likely an incredibly small number of locations that would divide that cleanly, if any.

So, it’s complicated. Needs to be independently managed outside politics as best as possible and staffed by smart people and backed up by good data.

They do. For all intents and purposes they are a passport with severely restricted international travel limitations.