Are you living on baked beans on toast?
No definitely not, I don't think anyone is allowed to live on baked beans on toast.
The collection answers the endless questions of what to do with the tiny turnips, pink-flushed Florence onions, purple carrots and broad beans the size of a little finger that those of us who use box systems or shop at farmers' markets often find in our kitchens.
Dinner could be jerk pork chop with black beans, followed by local black pineapple, grilled and served with rum and raisin ice-cream.
One dollar a day buys Maria the seeds to plant beans and corn to make tortillas or buy rice imported from the US.
Cooked white beans, meanwhile, are a gem to have ready in the fridge: puree and use to top bruschetta, or toss into rocket salads, or heat up with masses of olive oil, lemon juice and garlic to serve with bangers.
Add the creme fraiche, beans and parsley, simmer for a few minutes and season to taste.
Filled with humour and almost real-time practical advice about the weekly price movements of supermarket food, it is a plain-speaking, practical austerity cookery guide – quite literally how to feed yourself and your toddler on £10 a week, in ways that are healthy, tasty and, importantly (to relieve the tedium of baked beans), varied.
Simmer for 15 minutes, until most of the kidney beans have broken down and thickened the soup, and the spinners are cooked through.
Around 200 customers a day enjoy its old favourites such as "Lubia-polo cooked by Maman Maryam", a combination of rice, green beans, minced meat, tomato and saffron, priced at around £2. Tabassom Latifi, 29-year-old founder of Mamanpaz, was working for a corporate bank before she left to pursue this project.
For the farmers on western Nicaragua's volcanic range, who tend to favour beans over almost all other crops making a living from just beans is far from stable, despite the fertile soils.
