We are told that we need to eat more beans, legumes, and other high fiber nutrient rich vegetables. Not simply because we are aging and need to have more protein in our diet as we lose that youth endowed muscle mass, but everyone needs to have better nutrition in general. So, I started added beans to my quinoa. I joined that quinoa craze years back, and I learned that we really like that grain.
But, I would use canned beans.
So let’s begin this saga of cooking beans by acknowledging that the salt added to canned beans is not necessarily good for you. Ok, all the added chemicals and preservatives aren’t supposedly good no matter what food you eat. Isn’t it the going concern that processed foods are the reason that cancer rates are up, especially among the young? For someone to get so sick at so young an age based upon diet (sadly there are genetic reason-BRCA- that people get cancer at young ages), you would really have to ask yourself, exactly how much crap are people eating…
Well anyway, when I would buy canned beans, I would strain them and run them under cold water to get rid of as much of the liquid as possible. Yes, I know, for vegans, or anyone I suppose, the liquid in chickpeas is gold and you are supposed to use that for cooking. But I would think those chefs mean the liquid created when cooking chickpeas at home. However, not being vegan, and never aspiring to be vegan, I don’t cook with leftover chickpea juice.
Meanwhile, the reason I have decided to enter into this journey is that the spouse has head a heart procedure. By the way, I like how they say procedure instead of surgery nowadays. Or is it only surgery when they crack open your chest. He had one of those “procedures” where they insert a tube in an artery in the groin and then they wriggle the apparatus up to your heart and do microsurgery. (We live in an amazing time.) So “procedure” because even though its heart surgery they try to make it less frightening. Sorry, but the entire thing was quite scary.
So afterwards, the doctor told him that he was to avoid salt. Truth be told, I do not really cook with salt anyway. Yes, I know that a little salt is good and necessary to be healthy, but I think that in the American diet there is just too much salt. (Honestly, I think there is just too much of everything in the American way of life. ) And I auspiciously try to monitor and balance our diet.
So I have cut back even on the amount of salt we had been using before his heart surgery and now I even use unsalted butter when making him eggs for breakfast.
Yes, I cook with real, meaning Irish, butter. (You don’t need to use alot) There are enzymes in butter that are needed for your healthy gut bacteria, as there are good fats that are needed for your body to function properly.
So you bet, I still cook for my husband. I know, it’s so tradwife. But it is also the delegation of tasks we have created over 40 years of marriage. (Meanwhile, our boys know how to cook. It is a life skill afterall). And yes, while the husband might learn to cook for himself if I refused (I just taught him how to use the toaster), considering his claim to fame is over buttered laden grilled cheese, I don’t think that his menu would be heart healthy.
So, my experiment this morning, is to cook dried beans. I soaked them starting midafternoon yesterday and put them on the stove this morning. I added onion, bayleaf, and carrots to the mix. I also put several different types of beans together, which I have just learned is not something you should do since different beans need to cook at different time periods. Some for 30 minutes and others for 4 hours. Ok. So we will see what kind of concoction I come up with.
This is going to be interesting….