Today let’s talk about the first of the Native American gastronomical trinity that has influenced the world—beans. Dutchman explorer Jasper Danckaerts provides a interesting Dutch and Amerindian first contact and first European bean encounter scene in his journal. The meeting happens somewhere between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley region in the late 1600s. “On arriving . . . they immediately offered us some boiled beans in a [gourd. The queen] gave us also a piece of their bread, that is, pounded maize kneaded into a cake and baked under the ashes." Here the interesting part for me, he writes, "We ate some of it, more for the purpose of satisfying her people, than our appetite.”