Cooking Dry beans, Pinto

These are my favorite instructions and I am posting them here because I hate having to look for them all the time!  :)

Preparations:

• Sort and rinse beans
• bring 1 lb of beans to a boil for 2 minutes with 8 C of water
• cover & soak for at least 1 hour
• Drain & Rinse beans

Cooking:

• add 6 C water to beans and simmer for at least 2 hours
• during this time you can add flavoring

Moving on to Refried Beans:

• at this point if I haven't seasoned already I season now
• I don't have a recipe to share right now, we are working on a low sodium solution for my hubby who just found out he has HIGH blood pressure.  :(  one of my easy favorite is 1/2 can of enchilada sauce (I am working on figuring out how to make my own!)
• so you can blend them at this point with an immersion blender, or put is small batches in the blender.  I like to leave out a little so there is some chunkiness to the beans.
• I don't re-fry them, or add any lard or shortening,  if it is too runny we will simmer it until it thickens up.