Red Beans & Ricewith Cornbread

Although there are only two dishes, each has two different plantsthat constitute their ingredients.

They are:

Kidney BeansRice

CornWheat

- Garret Dupre

Kidney Bean

The 'Red Beans' in Red Beans & Rice are Kidney Beans.

Kidney Beans are a variety of Common Bean, and Common Beans are actually a kind of legume.

Like all other legumes, Kidney Bean plants produce dry fruits (pods, in this instance) which dehisce on two sides. The entire pod is a single carpel (ovary) with multiple ovules (beans).

DicotsLike other dicots, the stem ofa kidney bean plant has vasculesarranged in a circle, like this:

DicotsThe root of a dicot has xylemin the shape of an 'X' in the middle, which you can sort of seehere:

Kidney Bean

Here are what Kidney Beans look like:

Kidney BeanKidney Bean plants are angiosperms and produce flowers.

As annuals, they only live one year.

Since the 'seeds' (beans) are composed of two cotyledons, they are dicots. Here is a bean with its two cotyledons removed from their skin and separated from each other:

Kidney Bean

The petals of dicots appear in multiples of either four or five.

The Kidney Bean flower, specifically,is composed of five petals.

Unlike regular flowers with radial symmetry, in which all petals are identical, Kidney Bean flowers are irregular with three different petal types present on each flower.

Kidney Bean

The petal types are:

Banner KeelWing

Every Kidney Bean flower is composed of one banner petal, one keel petal, and two wing petals, for a total of five petals.

Kidney Bean

Here is what a Kidney Bean flower looks like:

Kidney Bean

Like all other dicots, the leavesof the Kidney Bean plant have veins that form a net pattern:

Kidney Bean

Kidney Beans have the taproottypical of dicots. However, it's eventually outgrown by numerous other roots.

Here is a germinating Kidney Bean with an emerging taproot:

MonocotsOf my four plant ingredients,the Kidney Bean is the only dicot.

The other three plants are all monocots, but happen to be angiosperms, dry fruits, and annuals just like the Kidney Bean. These are the rice, wheat, and corn plants.

The rice constitutes the rice in Red Beans & Rice, ground wheat constitutes the flour from which the 'bread' part of the cornbread is made, and of course, corn constitutes the corn in the cornbread.

MonocotsRice, wheat, and corn plants havesomething else in common: They are all cultivated grasses. As a result, they all look basically the same, and their flowers have no petals.

MonocotsBeing monocots, they have stems with vascules scattered randomly throughout, as seen in this cross-section of a monocot stem:

MonocotsUnlike the vascules in the stems of monocots, the vasculesin their roots are arranged in a neatcircle, as in this cross-section of a rootfrom a corn plant:

MonocotsHere is another illustration of the root system of a corn plant, demonstrating the bushyness typicalof monocots.

Note the absence of anydiscernible tap root.

MonocotsThis illustration of a cornleaf shows the monocotleaf veins running parallel to eachother:

Rice

Here are some rice grains still on their stalk, before they'vebeen separated and had their hullsremoved:

RiceThis is rice without the hull (loose shell) but with the bran (hard shell) still intact. The bran gives it the brown color, and it's sold as 'brown rice.'

Rice

Finally, here is rice after its bran has been removed. These white grains are sold as 'white rice.'

Wheat

Moving on to the next monocot,wheat. Here is some still inside the hulls on the stalk:

Wheat

Here is some wheat after the hull has been removed:

Wheat

Here is whole wheat flour.Notice the off-white or yellowishcolor. Aging, crushing and filteringcan lighten the color, but will neverresult in truly white flour by themselves.

Wheat

This is white flour. The only way to get flour this white is to usechemicals that bleach it.

Corn

Here are some fresh ears of corn:

Corn

Here are some corn 'seeds', a.k.a.kernels, separated from the cob:

The End!

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