Today was a day of weird food. I like to listen to NPR’s The Splendid Table – it’s like watching the Food Network while you’re driving. Anyway, the host kept talking about how easy it was to cook dried beans, and how delicious they are, and how ”eating beans with whole grains makes a complete protein” – a phrase that has been sticking with me for days.
I happen to have dried beans around, but they are only for sprouting with preschoolers to witness the miracle that is a baby plant, or for tying into a lone tube sock to microwave and make a heating pad. So, with the knowledge of cooking up some carrot, celery and onion, then dumping that and dried beans into a crock pot with water and some salt, I made beans.
The big hitch? I don’t like beans.
Really, when I eat chili, I have to choke down the beans. It’s not so much a taste thing as a texture/rebellion from childhood. But the host said that they’d be good, so I trusted her.
Guess what? They weren’t that bad. I even made some rice to go with them and had beans and rice for lunch. That’s a complete protein, you know.
That wasn’t the weirdest thing I ate today, though. Some people gathered here for supper and Jill brought a bunch of MRE’s to sample. We passed around spicy chicken, white rice, buttered noodles, a bean and rice burrito (ironic, eh?) some weird meatloaf, and lemon poppy seed cake – all that had probably been cooked years ago and sealed into some nice, neat packages.
Thanks for broadening our horizons, Jill!
By the way, the best recipe for cooking beans is right here.
Karla says
That’s a lot of bean eating -- I bet it was smelly in your house last night.
Brad says
Great. Now the “Beans and Rice” song is going to be stuck in my head again. Do you enjoy planting songs in my head?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heKYNWFBkW8
Lauren says
I am shocked -- I’ve never heard that song!
Peggy says
Do jelly beans count as a dried bean?
christina says
Yes, but when you put a bunch of them in a crockpot for a few hours they all turn out grey….bleh!