Beans come in many shapes, flavors, colors and sizes. Beans are believed to be one of the earliest cultivated plants. Beans are still affordable and can be made into a complete protein by pairing with whole grains like wheat, brown rice or nuts. While beans will never taste like meat they definitely add bulk, nutrition and flavor to your meals.
Beans can be added to meat as an extender to save money. They can easily stand alone as a main course. Beans absorb flavorings, so spices are a must. Legumes can be used in place of meat in recipes like tacos or chili. They add nutrition to any dish. Fiber is also abundant in beans. Start out slow if you are not used to consuming foods like whole grains and legumes to avoid intestinal disturbances.
Beans absolutely do not cook at our altitude without a pressure cooker. The first time that I tried I gave up after three days of cooking them on the stove. Rice is the same way. I cook a pot of beans and a pot of rice about every other week. I freeze the excess and use them on the opposite weeks. I love my pressure cooker.
We decided to eat a vegetarian diet for a month or so last month. We made it about 29 days. It wasn't bad, but the amount of prep time was amazing. I felt like I was always trying to make something taste like something else. The best and easiest meals were just foods in their natural state. It was nearly a vegan diet. Very little animal anything was used during this time. I was also constantly trying to complete proteins by mixing this with that to ensure that we were getting the right nutrients. Basically, I just replaced meat with legumes, nuts, rice and other grains. That's it. We do not eat meat at every meal normally, so it wasn't too much of a change for us.
I did buy a few out of the normal type things like cashew milk ice cream, vegan butter and vegan milk made from different grains. I will do a review on these items in a future post. I bought them at the end of our month because we were ready for something different. We didn't have hardly any added fats or sugar during this time either. It was a very cleansing diet.
We used a lot of beans during this time. They were the most satisfying of the meals we had and they kept us full for a longer period of time compared to the other foods we were eating.
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| Great Northern Beans |
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| Always sort through your beans even if they say pre-sorted. This bag had a nice rock in it. Rinse well too. |
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| I still have to soak my beans even though I use a pressure cooker. |
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| I pressure up the cooker for 10 minutes and then I let them soak overnight. Then I drain and rinse them. I cook them in fresh water for about 55 minutes. |
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| I decided to make an un-traditional humus |
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| using some un-traditional items and |
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| seasonings |
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| made in the traditional way. |
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| It turned out really really good. |
This is a great way to use and enjoy beans. We dipped toasted tortillas into the un-traditional humus. Veggie sticks could have been used also. These are just a few ways that I prepared the beans I cooked. We had tones of grains, smoothies, veggies, soups, stews and pastas also. The month was enjoyable thanks to the versatility of beans. The diet would have been very difficult and less nutritional without beans.
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| A little garlic powder with a side of Backgammon. |
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The frozen baby lima beans were only supposed to be cooked for 8 to 9 minutes on the stovetop. I cooked them for hours. I should have just given up and used the pressure cooker. I think I tried doing this before and I remembered this after the fact.
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| Creole Brown Rice With Baby Lima Beans and Kale. |
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Mexican Pizza With Green Enchilada Sauce. I used the great northern beans that I had previously cooked and refried them. I flavored them with taco seasoning.
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I hope this encourages you to add beans to your diet on a regular basis. They are less expensive than meat, healthy for you and versatile.
Enjoy,
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