Dried white beans are the foundation of simple but classic dishes.

Even though we've grown them before, the sturdy vegetable vines still surprise us with their vigorous growth and overtake any sort of structure we provide them. One year, one of the vines latched onto the stray branch of a walnut tree and grew 12 feet from the ground into the dim recesses of the foliage, where I couldn't reach the beans at all. For the last couple of years our seasonal garden structures have been fashioned from old fishing poles. The gardener who lived here before us worked at a fishing-rod factory and she saved the rejects; so when we bought this house, we came into hundreds of lightweight fiberglass rods to use as stakes in the garden.

Two years ago, my wife built a row of teepees, and the bean vines quickly reached the top, so we stuck more rods on top of the first and made the teepees to accommodate them. Last year, she built a long A-frame of the poles, and the beans formed a wall along the north end of the garden. The yield was phenomenal. Two or three times a week, we had more than we could eat, and the balance was blanched and frozen.

Makes 6 cups

White beans cooked tender with or without the addition of a ham bone or hock make a flavorful and satisfying main dish. Serve them with slow-cooked greens and sweet corn bread. 6 cups water 2 cups dried white beans 1 or 2 bay leaves 1 tablespoon salt, or less if using a ham bone a ham bone or a ham hock, optional 1. In a large kettle over high heat, bring the water to a boil. Add the beans, bay leaves and salt, and as soon as the water returns to a boil, turn off the heat. Cover the pan and leave undisturbed for one hour. 2. When the hour has passed, turn the burner on high and bring the beans to a boil. Add a ham bone or ham hock if you wish, then reduce heat to medium-low. 3. Cook, stirring occasionally for 11/2 to 2 hours. Check the beans occasionally and add just enough water to keep the beans barely covered. When the beans are tender, serve them hot with their accompanying broth. Print friendly version. More recipes Slow-Cooked Greens Sweet Southern Corn Bread

Then, late in September, production slowed down, and distracted by other things, we stopped harvesting the beans and left the vines to wither. Late in the fall, in early November I guess, I went out to pull down the vines and turn them into compost. And there, still clinging valiantly to the bare ruined vines were bean pods, dozens and dozens of them. And inside each pod were a number of hard, dry beans, smooth as alabaster and as white.

I couldn't throw those little prizes onto the compost heap, so I picked them all. Thinking at first that I might just save enough to replant them in the spring, I realized pretty quickly that there were more than I would ever need to plant, so I painstakingly shelled them all and put them in a clean, dry jar. It was the first time I ever harvested my own dried beans, but I am fairly confident that it won't be my last.

I've always been fond of beans. A meal of beans, greens and corn bread was a weekly occurrence when I was growing up, and while it may sound meager, it was always a kind of celebration. We liked it just about as well as anything. The pot of beans usually held a ham bone or the remains of a pork roast, and an onion which disintegrated into the broth to make a kind of sauce. The greens - collards or mustard - were cooked for almost as long as the beans and they too were seasoned with a piece of pork. The corn bread, bright yellow and almost overly sweet, was typically made even sweeter with a drizzle of orange-blossom or Tupelo honey. It was the perfect foil to the salty beans. Ah, those were the days.

My own children may someday remember meals of beans, too. There have been times when beans, corn bread and greens from the garden were all that we could afford to put on the table. But these have been good times, and I am always as grateful for the time I have to cook beans as I am for the money it takes to buy fancier foods.

My fondness for beans is hardly unique. From the humble to the haute, almost every kind of cookbook has something to say about beans.

One of my favorite references to beans comes from "A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes," by Charles Francatelli, "late maitre d'hotel and chief cook to her gracious majesty Queen Victoria." First published in 1861, this tiny tome never fails to amuse me. With no index or table of content, finding anything in the book is a bit hit or miss unless one has a general sense of how old cookbooks are laid out. They start with soup, work their way through nursery foods and eventually land on home remedies for common ailments.

Somewhere between "How to Brew Your Own Beer" and "How to Cook an Omelet" is an entry on "White Haricot Beans," and this little diatribe says pretty much all there was to say about beans in the middle of the 19th century. "In France," Francatelli says, "beans form a principle part in the staple articles of food for the working classes, and indeed for the entire population; it is much to be desired that some effectual means should be had recourse to the purpose of introducing and encouraging the use of this most excellent vegetable among people as a general article of their daily food, more especially in the winter season." Hear hear, I say.

In "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," published about a hundred years later, Julia Child waxes poetic in her discussion of how to make a perfect cassoulet. More recently, the editors of Saveur give plain and practical advice in "Saveur Cooks American," and in "The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook," Christopher Kimball, editor of Cook's Illustrated, provides reams of research results on soaking beans overnight, soaking by the quick method and not soaking at all.

Some beans, it seems, don't need to soak, but others do. Pinto beans, for instance, make better, creamier-textured refried beans if they are cooked continually without presoaking. As for white beans, the haricot beans that are eaten immature as green beans, I think soaking overnight makes them better, but I seldom have the foresight to manage this feat. Instead, I opt for the "quick-soak" method. This offers the tenderizing advantages of a soak without the investment of time demanded by an overnight bath. The trick is to start the beans off in boiling water then turn them off for an hour before actually cooking them in earnest.

Greg Atkinson, Canlis executive chef, is the author of "In Season" (1997) and "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (1999) from Sasquatch Books.