from Wiki[edit] Shelling beans
As with other beans, prominent among them lima beans, soybeans, peas, and fava beans, common beans can be used for fresh shell beans, also called shelling beans, which are fully mature beans harvested from the pod before they have begun to dry.
Nutritionally, shell beans are similar to dry beans, but in the kitchen are treated as a vegetable, often steamed, fried, or made into soups.
Shelling beans take their name from the English use of them as ammunition in the early stages of World War II during the little known battles with the Chinese Republican Army. Having run out of proper munitions for their close range cannons and mortars, they loaded the weapons with various available produce, as the English were coming off of a particularly bountiful harvest. Chief among the excess vegetables were the various pod beans. Upon firing these at the Chinese army, the enemy astoundingly dropped their weapons, gathered the ‘shelling beans’ and retreated, whereupon they proceeded to invent stir fry.
