Cooking & Nutrition or Toxicity

Nutritional Benefits & Values

• crunchy and mild, Jicama is a good substitute for water chestnuts or bamboo shoots in salads or stir-fries
• makes a crisp and delicious low-calorie snack
• texture is like raw potatoes; flavor is sweet and starchy
• high in carbohydrates, dietary fiber.
• 86-90% water
• contains only trace amounts of protein and fat

Toxicity

• ripe pods, leaves and vine are all poisonous
• seeds are poisonous due to the toxin rotenone, which is used in pesticides

Cooking

• Preparation
  • peel off the rough brown skin and eat the white flesh raw or cooked
• Cooking Methods
  • usually eaten fresh
  • eat fresh on salads or vegetable plates
  • marinate and stir-fry
  • add to soups
  • fresh seasonings: salt, lemon or lime juice, chili powder
  • recipes with jicama often include cilantro, chiles, ginger, citrus, soy sauce, sesame

Sources

Footnote	KSC	SWGB	WIKI
Title	True Jicama Seed #222	Sunset Western Garden Book	Pachyrhizus erosus
Author(s)	Kitazawa Seed Co.	Kathleen Brenzel	Wikipedia
Buy Now	Seed packet containing 20-25 seeds: $3.49
Copywrite	2011	8th Edition, 2007	2011

Types & Varieties of Beans

French Beans

• actually not french at all...they originally came from the Americas
• French Beans are wind-pollinated, so they fruit more reliably than runner beans, which are insect-pollinated
• also known as:
  • Snap Beans
  • String Beans
  • Kenya Beans
  • Kidney Beans
    • just a categorization of how long the bean was left on the plant
    • also known as Haricot Beans
    • left to ripen fully on the plant
    • when dried, they can store for many months