A friend on Twitter started doing
Random Tip Tuesday posts and I thought it was a great idea, so I'm being all rude and being a copy cat I'm sharing a tip of my own today. I'll not do this anymore, I feel bad already, I'm sorry. You should go read hers.
In any case, my parents are good about coming up with the most bizarre suggestions, and this time one of them totally paid off, so I figured I'd share.
A few years ago the green beans we grew were a little more gas-inducing than usual, and Mom was apparently complaining about this to a friend (because who doesn't want to talk about flatulence with their friends?), who suggested she drop a carrot in the pot next time she cooked up a mess. Mom thought this sounded odd, but after a while I guess she tried it, and pretty soon she was bragging to me about how much it worked.
I didn't believe it, but I did try it next time I made beans & cornbread, and was blown away.
It turns out, if you throw a few baby carrots into a pot of beans while they're cooking, you can have friends over the next day without being nicknamed Pumba.
And better yet, it seems to work in everything I've tried. I usually have baby carrots around, so I throw 1-3 in a pot, depending on how much I'm cooking. So far it works with all types of beans I've tried, and onion soup. You can even eat the carrots later, if you're like me and can't stand to waste food, but Mom just picks them out and throws them away before serving the dish.
A certain friend tells me that ginger works just as well, but I can't stand ginger, and carrots don't effect the taste of the dish at all (that I can tell).