Get Behind the Bean!

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I grew up in New Orleans and Lake Charles and was raised on Camellia red beans, every Monday. I raised my kids in Texas on them and am now introducing them to my grandkids. While I can find the red beans most anywhere here in Montgomery/Conroe TX I can not find the Great Northern beans anywhere. I have relatives bring them to me from Lake Charles. PLEASE promote the Great Northern beans to the grocery store buyers in Texas…Kroger, Brookshire Bros., HEB and W-M. Thank you.

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Anyone that grew up in New Orleans shares the love for Camellia Brand Red Beans and Rice. It is what we were raised on! My mom used to ask my brother what he wanted for his birthday and he would tell her please cook a pot of red beans. We still love them, and when we smell them cooking, and then eat them, it reminds of us home.

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I retired to Virginia and these people not only don’t understand Southern food, they don’t stock any summer peas and beans. I remembered Camellia from living in New Orleans many years ago, looked online, and there they were, alive and doin’ fine. They have been my lifeline to decent food ever since.

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A group of Facebook friends from points south of the Mason-Dixon line got to remembering how much they loved “lady peas” and how hard they are to find if you live in Maine as I do. Maine grows all sorts of peas/beans but no lady peas. To help me out a FB friend dug around and found you folks and I have just ordered my first shipment of your lady peas. Will keep you posted once I get them and cook them Can hardly wait to see if this works! thank you so much for helping recover from Lady Pea homesickness.

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We lived in Seoul, South Korea and the government MAFRA Ministry of Farming and Rural Affairs sponsored a contest to cook Kimchi with something from your home country. I cooked CamillaBlack Eyed Peas with the Spicey cabbage kimchi and told the luck from the peas and money from the green cabbage story and won first place!! You can’t buy Camilla anything in Korea, but you CAN fill your suitcase with beans when you fly between Houston and Seoul. My kids have called me the Bean Queen for years – now I really feel like I deserve the title. Your beans are Internationally Famous and cooking them in Korea made a foreign country seem more like Home.

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I cook a lot of y’all beans

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So happy to find Camellia beans! A YouTube video pointed me in your direction. I grew up eating beans every day of the week. Talk about comfort food. Your beans did not disappoint. Today my shipment arrived & I quickly started a pot of pink beans. The smell, or maybe it was the onions, brought me to tears and took me back to my childhood. Who says you can’t go home again? Just put on a pot of Camellia beans, and let the memories flow.

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I am 70 years old. I have always hated black eyed peas. They always taste like chalk. Family and friends for years have tried to get me to eat them, with no luck. No matter the recipe, the cook, or anything else, and dish that was primarily black eyed peas always tasted like chalk. I could eat a soup that had a few peas in it, but never anything that was primarily black eyed peas. This changed when I ate some of your black eyed peas! No chalky taste at all! Very tasty peas. Wife used the recipe on the bag and it is delicious! Only your brand from now on, for all our dried peas and beans!

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My 94 year old mother grew up in East Texas, 90 miles from Shreveport. My Granny cooked so many Field Peas, Crowder Peas and Lady Cream Peas when I visited her during the summer, I never forgot the taste. Peas with homemade hotwater cornbread, sliced tomatoes and cold refrigerator cucumbers . Having moved to West Texas, I completely lost the peas!. How wonderful to find that someone close to my mother’s old home still has these old memories we can hold in a bag. I, of course, have order every kind and cooked my first batch this weekend! My Mother was so excited. We served field peas with hotwater cornbread, sliced tomatoes, refrigerator cucumbers and pork ribs. Mom says it made her feel like she was back on the old Carlisle farm again. What a great treat. Now, I’m teaching my husband what he missed growing up as a kid! San Saba, Texas folks don’t know anything about Cream Peas! Thank you. Now that I’ve found you, we will be including your peas in many of our meals. P.S. You began in 1923; my Mom was born in 1928!

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Every time we would visit the Winn-Dixie in Natchitoches, LA on our way home back to TX., my uncle would fill up his cart with Camelia Beans, all kinds and I asked him why all the beans and he told me they cook just right and thick His mama states he grew up loving beans. Years later I understand well what he was saying..”they cook just right and thick!..my uncle is 70+ and he stills eat beans

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I’m 58 and from Mississippi, about 90 miles from New Orleans. I was raised on a farm, and grew up eating Camelia brand beans. It was one of the few things my daddy could cook when my mama was working late. As I became older I took over cooking the beans and Daddy started cooking flapjacks or Jacks to go with them. Daddy would call me on the phone and say “I’ll cook the Jacks”, and I would say, “I’ll cook the beans.” It was a dinner date with my Daddy. I miss him and our meals together, but Camelia brings all the memories back when I cook a pot of Big Lima beans!!

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We had gone to the Soul Food Cookoff in Houston last year, and the pastor who runs the cookoff found out we were from Louisiana and knew I liked to cook. He asked if I’d cook this year and the rest is history! The Cookoff is held annually to benefit College Park Cemetery which was started in the 19th century for freed slaves and their descendants, and also to honor the memory of MLK. The event serves a great cause and it really was a lot of fun, with a very eclectic group of people both cooking and attending. I’m a native of New Orleans, so I knew I had to cook red beans and rice using Camellia Beans. My secret recipe beat out the competition and I was granted the Chef’s Choice award and First Place…Nothing beats red beans and rice from a NOLA native!

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I grew up on red beans and rice. My mom would make them every Monday. You knew as soon as you got home from school that it would be just deliciousness. The beans were always cooked to perfection , the sausage melted in your mouth. She always served it with rice and cornbread…..ahhhhhhhh Love in a bowl!! I cook it on Monday’s as much as a can but, I must confess I make them on Sundays sometimes.

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I am from Dallas, but please don’t hold that against me–I married a cute little swamp critter from New Orleans. It was during one visit to the West Bank that I got to taste her grandmother’s red beans and rice, and I’ve been perfecting this dish every couple months since then to keep her from getting so homesick. I tried one time with store red beans and won’t be making that mistake again. For the last 15 years we have lived in Southern California, so every time we visit home or the in-laws come to visit, we always pack our bags with many pounds of Camellia red beans, some cajun shake and some crab boil. Thank you for keeping the beans consistent all this time! Looking forward to many more pots of “home”.

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It’s no secret that I LURVE red beans and rice.  But only mine.  LOL!  I’m far too critical of other people’s red beans and rice so I don’t even try them.  I know…bad Mingo…BAD! But my beans are pretty dang delish. If you’ve ever had them… you know this for sure.

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Well tomorrow is Monday. Which means it is Camellia red beans day, and as you can see I have just washed my Camellia red beans and I’m going to put them in the crock pot and fill it with water for tonight. Tomorrow, I dump my vegetables and meat into the crock pot, turn it on early in the morning and by 2 or 3 maybe 4 o’clock the beans will be ready and the rice will be cooking!

Barry Begault’s Slow Cooker Red Beans Family Recipe

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My fiancee brought some Camella Beans home from New Orleans ..I cooked up a bag of red beans and made rice, I was in heaven the best beans I have ever ate, I now send off and order my beans the in store beans in VA look out if Camella Beans come to our area.

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I’ve made Red Beans & Rice from scratch. Bought a bag of Camellia red beans with the spice package recently. Without adding any of my own spices and two andouilles, soaking the kidney beans overnight, and adding some baking soda as the beans were first cooking with the Trinity, I’ve gotta say the Camellia spices package produced a wholly pleasantly warm delicious dish. Not overwhelmingly hot (add more heat yourself in your bowl) but just plain flavorful. I was skeptical but am really satisfied with how this potfull turned out. Five stars!

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We spent the better part of two and a half years as transplants in New Orleans. Because we were seminary students, our budget was tiny, but we discovered Camellia red beans, and not only were they affordable, but they were also delicious and kept us satisfied and living well! I recently found a large bag of these beans when we were back in New Orleans, and brought them all the way back to Missouri so that we could relive those Cajun days!

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Do I win. A red bean in my split peas!

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Hello all I live in Michigan and I was born in Baton Rouge I come back every year or so to visit my family and a few years ago I was bringing back beans to Michigan because we don’t have Camellia beans here and I had 25 pounds of beans spread throughout my luggage and carry on I was stopped the TSA agent held up the line at Baton Rouge Airport to take each bag out individually and run them through the scanner I almost missed my plane so i could have a great pot of red beans when I got back to Michigan those lasted me about 2 years until I came back again love the beans thank you wish we had them here.

Leon Michigan.

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I’ve been soaking my Camellia beans overnight then cook them in my electric pressure pot. I follow the recipe on the bag and they always come out just great!

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Up until this time, I have only eaten lady peas twice in my life: once last summer, when I purchased a pound froma local produce stand; and the first time when my MIL and I shelled a “mess” of them in her front yard, under the big oak tree. Dead still air, sweat rolling off us. She seasoned them only with a little sugar and a lump of butter. Said anything else would overpower them. They’re hard to find in NW Ga. Imagine my dellight in finding you and your dried lady peas.

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All I had to do was ring this doorbell on Monday nights, and when the door opened, I was sure to smell some red beans on the stove.

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The first Peychaud came to New Orleans from the Caribbean around 1795, and I’m betting he had a beans & rice recipe in his travel trunk.

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When I behaved well my mom would give me a bean. When I’d collected a whole jar of beans, I could trade them in for money to buy a treat. After trade-in, they might have ended up in my mom’s 3-Bean Soup.

See Akasha’s Mom’s 3-Bean Soup.

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I have raised more generations of babies than I have beans in the pot. And they all love their hot lunches. Red, black, white, doesn’t matter what color  – it’s a healthy meal and the price is right.

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These weren’t just steps. They were our dining room on fall evenings- Red Beans and Ham on the porch.

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Always reminds me of home.

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I started the Krewe of Red Beans Parade as an homage not only to the New Orleans culinary tradition of Red Beans & Rice, but to the Mardi Gras Indians and second-line parades. It’s all about co-mingling all the different influences of the city. Krewe members must create a new bean costume each year. We’re now sponsored by Camellia Brand – they supply all of our beans! We march on Lundi Gras (the Monday before Mardi Gras) every year.

See Devin’s “Feed the Krewe” Red Beans Recipe.

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In my home country of Brazil, we have a black bean stew called “Feijoada” cooked with meats in a similar style to how New Orleanians cook red beans. Here are my black bean stew and collard greens recipes from my cookbook, I Learned to Read with Recipe Books, that follows my journey as a cook from an early age when my grandmother read recipes to me, and my blog, www.sundayflavorclub.com, which shares the things I cook every Sunday for large gatherings of friends and family.

Ana’s Brazilian Black Beans (Mild Feijoada)

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Mandina’s Restaurant has been proudly serving Camellia red beans and rice at our location on Canal Street in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans since 1932. Some things should never change.

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Monday’s mean one thing.

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I was on a Navy submarine in the South China Sea during Vietnam; my father sent me a huge box of Camellia red beans – so many that I gave the cooks our family recipe and hosted a red beans & rice dinner (with French bread and spiced pork chops) for the whole crew. I can’t tell you our exact position, but we were at a depth where many sea critters turn on their headlights.