I just want to emphasize once again that even organic beans are very affordable, making this a great dish to serve frequently.

Accessing pedantic cooking nature....

According to Russ Parsons (food guy at the LA Times and a wonderful food resource) and the folks over at eGullet.com, the three (no...four) main things that can cause beans to never soften are:

Hard water (very possible with well water)
High altitude (not likely "at the edge of the ocean..")
Old beans.  (Aren't you glad I didn't say "has beans?")
Adding the acid (vinegar or tomatoes, e.g.) before the beans are soft.

As for salt, I always add the salt right up front so that the whole bean is infused with salty goodness, and I've never had a problem.

Thanks for the recipe - looking forward to trying it.

Jeff

Tee hee. Thanks for the list of possible offenders. I think it must have been a combination of old beans and hard water. "Old beans and Hard Water" sounds like the title of a destined-to-be-unpopular country and western song, perhaps about running out of premium coffee. - Roz

Beatrix Potter was the author of some of the most philosophically deep books put into the hands of chldren.  It is not surprising that many of those children have come away with a lifelong sympathy for animals.

We occasionally get a wandering mouse, who briefly moves in before moving on.  Not long ago, I found our latest mouse in our kitchen trash can, and nearly caught it in my hand, but it ran up my arm and down my back, under my shirt, and dropped to the floor and escaped.  I am not sure what I would have done with it, had I caught it: probably I would have just looked at it for a little, before letting it go.  And then I would have washed my hands very thoroughly!

Thanks for the recipe, Roz.  We love our salads, which are not just a sidedish, but a main part of the meal.  The one ingredient that we do not often get is parsley -- and I do not know why, because we like it.

When we try this, we shall certainly keep the parsley, but Michael will want to add something else that is leafy.  We love spinach, so that is the likely choice.

The dressing sounds great, but is more elaborate than what we usually make.  Usually we are perfectly content with olive oil and vinegar, but often Michael will make a mustard dressing, or a lemon vinaigrette.  I do not know that he ever mixes mustard and lemon -- but sure, why not?

We never use orange juice in salad dressings, and in fact do not usually buy either orange juice or oranges.  But I remember a very good dressing that my mother used to make, which had orange juice in it.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Flat leaf (Italian) parsley tastes great and it is a wonderful ingredient, but I think it is so often thought of as a garnish that it gets ignored. It's like a beautiful actress who never gets any meaty, serious roles because directors can't think or see past her beauty. Regular parsely has a great "green" flavor, and I like to use it in tabouli, but I generally stay away from it because I don't like its texture. Either way, they are both very flavorful and should be included in more recipes.

Hard water and high altitude.  That's funny, because I never had a problem, in Santa Fe at 7000', on well water that leaves calcium deposits on everything, getting beans to cook.  Good luck, I guess, especially since I frequently forget about dry beans and then cook them when I find them months or years later.

Of course, now that I know this, I'll start having problems.  Gee, thanks, Roz! :)

Actually, when I told Michael what I had written, he laughed at me and called me a fool.  (Which he often does, in fact.)  He claims that he uses parsley a great deal, whether or not I am aware of it; and I guess I had better believe him.

Anyway, he likes the recipe, and printed it out.  He intends to use dry beans, noting that they are much cheaper than the canned ones.  He does not understand the problem about getting the beans tender; I obviously explained it to him very inadequately.  He agrees with me that the dressing sounds a bit more elaborate than what our tastes require.

So, we shall see.  It will be a fun experiment.  Plus, it is a great recipe for the liturgical season of Lent, when everyone is encouraged to try being vegetarian.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Willa,
I think it was the age of my lentils that was probably the biggest factor influencing their long cooking time. I bought them at a well respected natural foods store the day before I cooked them, but I might go to an Indian store instead next time, hoping to get fresher lentils.

Well, I've got a jar on my counter that's had the same lentils in it for the last...um...number of months.  Clearly I better cook those suckers up before they get fossilized!

I do wonder if, for longer-cooking beans, a pressure cooker not only speeds things along but also penetrates beans that would otherwise have been imperviously hard and never cooked?  I don't have a pressure cooker, though I do plan to get one this year (actually two, a big one for canning and a small one for cooking), so I cook my beans in an unglazed clay pot from South America (yes, lead-free and all) which, through some vitreous magic I don't really understand, manages not to fracture when used over a flame.

Michael made the three-bean salad on Thursday, and it was wonderful.  We both liked it very much.

This time, he used fresh green beans, but canned chickpeas and white beans.  He said he would generally prefer to use dry beans, which are cheaper than canned, but he did not have time to soak them.

As I thought he would do, he simplified the dressing: no vinegar, just lemon juice; thyme instead of tarragon; yes to mustard, no to honey, no to orange juice.

So thanks again!  

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

I use it in salads all the time as the main greens. But it can be so tough that I've found that if I mix it with the dresing about an hour before serving then add the rest of the ingredients at serving time it makes a wonderfully, refeshing starter.

I almost always partially cook beans on their own first though before adding them to the rest of whatever I'm making, so it's never been an issue (the old bean thing has).  The only thing I ever soak over night is split green peans, but then I usually don't have enough to cook with as once they've swelled I eat them plain by the fist full.

If you're not a far-sighted meal planner like I'm not, you don't have to soak beans overnight before cooking. Just rinse them as usual, place them in a pot covered with a few inches of water and bring to a boil. Then turn off the heat and let sit for a few hours (the more the better; I try to soak them for at least three). Then cook as usual and you'll have pretty much the same result as soaking for a long time.