Looking for info on foods?

I needed to find out how to cook dry garbanzo beans, also known as chickpeas. The few times I've used them in the past I just got them canned, but as I am still cooking as can-free as possible, I needed the alternative of dry beans. I googled it and came across a great resource to find nutritional and all sorts of other info on foods. The website is called World's Healthiest Foods. This is going to help me out a lot as both of my kiddos are very particular (aka picky!) and I am running out of ideas for healthy, high protein, nutritional foods and snacks for them!!! I thought I'd share with you too.

A little tidbit of the info on garbanzo's from the website (to give you a taste of what the site has to offer)....

Tips for Preparing Garbanzo Beans

Before washing garbanzos, you should spread them out on a light colored plate or cooking surface to check for, and remove, small stones, debris or damaged beans. After this process, place them in a strainer, and rinse them thoroughly under cool running water.

To shorten their cooking time and make them easier to digest, garbanzo beans should be presoaked (presoaking has been found to reduce the raffinose-type oligosaccharides, sugars associated with causing flatulence.) There are two basic methods for presoaking. For each you should start by placing the beans in a saucepan and adding two to three cups of water per cup of beans.

The first method is to boil the beans for two minutes, take pan off the heat, cover and allow to stand for two hours. The alternative method is to simply soak the garbanzos in water for eight hours or overnight, placing pan in the refrigerator so that they will not ferment. Before cooking them, regardless of method, skim off the any skins that floated to the surface, drain the soaking liquid, and then rinse them with clean water....(cont.)