Beans, Beans the Magical Fruit

An Ode to Garbanzo Beans

Oh thou glorious bean

How can I say what you mean

To the hungry herbivore?

When I go to the store

I buy more and more.

The things you can do with a chickpea!

I prepare with glee

Hummus for me

And falafel to pass around.

This bean can be found

By ounces and pounds

In pastas and veggie sauté.

There will ne’er come a day

When I tire or say,

“No more chickpeas for me!”

Everyone must see

The beauty that be

In the great garbanzo bean.

But seriously, garbanzo beans are the best.  I did not truly appreciate the chickpea until I focused in earnest on healthy vegetarian cooking.  It is quite possible to eat an unhealthy vegetarian diet, and I must admit, when I first transitioned, I ate too much dairy, pasta, and dessert to make any health claims about my diet.  My excuse was that I was limited to cafeteria food, and since I have been able to cook for myself more, I have discovered the joys of healthy vegetarian options.  Especially beans.  Beans are the perfect food bundle.  They are loaded with protein and healthy nutrients, high fiber, and relatively low fat, of the unsaturated variety.  They are versatile, taste delicious, and come in lots of fun varieties.  Beans are also dirt-cheap, especially if you buy dried beans, which are a little more labor-intensive, but usually well under a dollar a bag.  Canned beans are also very affordable. 

The garbanzo bean, also known as the chickpea, is one of my favorites.  I first realized the power of the chickpea when I started to eat hummus (back in the cafeteria days, where they served hummus from Woody’s Oasis).  Hummus is essentially ground-up chickpeas, tahini (ground sesame seeds), garlic, lemon juice, and various additional flavoring.  The possibilities are endless, though I am partial to red pepper hummus.  Garbanzo beans are also found in falafel, a delicious Middle Eastern specialty (if you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend you do!).  They can be ground up into flour for gluten-free dishes (although baked goods made with chickpea flour are rumored to taste slightly fishy).  I also find garbanzo beans delicious in their un-ground state in pasta, sautéed with vegetables, in soup, or cold on salads.  And don’t worry, your digestive system soon adjusts to eating lots of beans.

Below are some of my favorite chickpea recipes, for both vegetarians and omnivores.    Most of these recipes involve a food processor, which I discovered is almost a necessity to vegetarian cooking.  However, a blender usually is a good substitute.

Chicken-Butternut Squash Soup

(Better Homes and Gardens)

This is a good dish if you are cooking for a mixed crowd of vegetarians and omnivores.  Just serve the chicken as an add-in and use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.

1 ¼ lb. butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut in ¾-inch pieces (4 cups)

1 small red onion, cut in ½-inch wedges

1 Tbsp. curry powder

1 Tbsp. olive oil

3 14-oz. cans chicken or veggie broth

1 15-26 ounce can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

1/3 cup dried apricots, snipped

½ cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp. olive oil

¼ tsp. nutmeg

1 deli-roasted chicken

Fresh cilantro leaves

1. Preheat oven to 425° F. In shallow roasting pan toss squash and onion with curry powder and the 1 tablespoon oil.  Roast, uncovered, 20 minutes or until tender.  Reduce oven tem to 350°F.

2. In 4-qt Dutch oven combine roasted vegetables, broth, beans, and apricots.  Bring to boiling; reduce heat.  Simmer, covered, 10 minutes.  Cool about 5 minutes.  Transfer half the soup to food processor or blender.  Cover; process or blend until smooth.  Return to Dutch oven; heat through.

3. Meanwhile, in bowl toss walnuts with 1 tsp oil and the nutmeg.  Spread nuts on baking sheet.  Bake 7 minutes or until golden and toasted.  Reheat chicken according to package directions, if needed.

4. To serve, top soup with nuts, chicken, and cilantro.

Hummus

(Vegetarian Times)

3 cups cooked chickpeas, or 2 15-oz. cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained twice, hot or warmed in microwave

1/3 cup lemon juice

1 clove garlic

1/2 cup tahini

Purée warm chickpeas, lemon juice, garlic, and 2/3 cup water in food processor 3 to 4 minutes, or until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl if necessary. Add tahini, and purée 2 minutes, or until mixture has consistency of soft cream cheese, adding 1 to 2 Tbs. water, if necessary. Season with salt and pepper, if desired.  Enjoy with pita chips (I recommend Stacy’s Pita Chips).

Spaghetti with Chunky Tomato Sauce

(Vegetarian Times)

8 oz. (2 cups) sliced white mushrooms

1 medium red bell pepper, cut into chunks

1 large leek, white part cut into chunks

2 Tbs. olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced (1 Tbs.)

2 Tbs. dried oregano

2 tsp. dried thyme

1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

2 15-oz. cans diced tomatoes

1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas (or 1 15-oz. can, rinsed and drained)

1/4 cup red wine

8 cups baby spinach leaves

8 oz. spaghetti

1. Place mushrooms, bell pepper, and leek in bowl of food processor. Pulse until ingredients are coarsely chopped.
2. Heat oil in large saucepan or stockpot over medium-high heat. Add mushroom mixture and garlic, and season with salt and pepper, if desired. Cook 3 to 5 minutes, or until vegetables are softened and most of liquid has evaporated. Stir in oregano, thyme, and red pepper flakes, and cook 30 seconds, or until fragrant. Add tomatoes, chickpeas, and wine, and season with salt and pepper, if desired.
3. Cover, and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add spinach, and cook 3 to 5 minutes more, or until spinach has wilted.
4. Meanwhile, cook spaghetti according to package directions. Serve spaghetti topped with sauce. 

Chickpea, Asparagus, and Corn Sauté

(Weight Watchers)

This is a recipe that is easily adaptable and open to experimentation.  I make it frequently and it’s never the same twice.  My favorite variation is adding swish chard in with the asparagus. 

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 1/2 cups fresh corn kernels (or thawed frozen)

1 lb fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces

1 (11 1/2 ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 small red onion, finely chopped

1/2 cup fresh basil, thinly sliced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

1. Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.

2. Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

3. Add the corn and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes.

4. Add the asparagus and cook, stirring occasionally, until bright green, about 3 minutes.

5. Add the chickpeas and cook, stirring occasionally, until asparagus are tender, about 2 minutes.

6. Remove the skillet from the heat; stir in the tomatoes, onion, basil, salt and pepper.

7. Serve right away or at room temperature, over brown rice, if desired.

I realize this post has been pretty vegetarian.  So I will briefly relate my recent meat-eating adventures.  We had lamb yesterday for Sunday lunch, and it was delicious!  We were trying to figure out why lamb is not very popular in the American diet, but came to no definite conclusions.  If anyone has any answers to this, feel free to share!  I am quite fond of lamb, though, and Rob has promised me even better lamb chops straight from Muscle in My Arm Farm when I visit over winter break.  Can’t wait!  Until then, you all can have this song going through your head too. 

Ground Beef is Weird

Meatless spaghetti sauce can be a scrumptious thing.  It’s smooth, savory, with delicious tomato flavor, and can be made even more delicious by adding garbanzo beans, vegetables, and spices.  Adding ground beef to spaghetti sauce, however, is now on my list of weird things to do.  Ground beef is just weird.  All the other meat I have eaten so far has seemed normal, even though I haven’t eaten it in a while.  The texture seems familiar and not very far removed from the turkey, chicken, or pig roaming around the barnyard.  Ground beef on the other hand, has a rather unpleasant texture, and seems a far cry from the cow chewing its cud out in the pasture.  I realize that it’s just ground up beef, but my palate has had a hard time adjusting to eating hamburger.

It doesn’t help that most commercially available ground beef is treated with ammonia to kill E. coli.  I hope the ground beef we are eating at my house wasn’t treated with ammonia, seeing as it touted the label “All Natural” (I realize this label is virtually meaningless, but I’m pretending it’s not).  However, most beef served at fast food restaurants, sold in grocery stores, and served in school lunches is treated with ammonia.  Nine years ago, Beef Products, Inc developed a process to treat fatty trimmings from the beef industry with ammonia to kill salmonella and E. coli.  This meant that the trimmings could now be used for more than just cooking oil or pet food.  However, as this New York Times article reports, testing of the Beef Products, Inc. meat in school lunches revealed unsafe levels of both salmonella and E. coli.  This questionable process, researched by the company selling it, doesn’t even do what it advertises.  Yet Beef Products, Inc. was still able to get their product approved by the USDA and sell its way into almost every hamburger consumed in the USA. 

Treating meat with ammonia is the perfect example of what’s wrong with our food system.  In the NY Times article, school lunch officials point out that they continue to buy Beef Products, Inc. beef because it is cheaper than other beef.  Subsidized agriculture and “economies of scale” result in school children in our country being exposed to unsafe food.  When corporations control our food supply and are simply looking to make a profit, the safety of the food supply is in jeopardy.  Though treating beef with ammonia could be viewed as a positive for food safety, it is in fact the wrong “solution” to a problem with the very structure of the food system.  The strain of E. coli targeted by such treatment, O157:H7, is a mutation of E. coli that originated with the rise of large-scale feed lots for cattle.  These concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are unsanitary and prove to be a breeding ground for dangerous bacteria that affect not only the cattle themselves, but the consumers of beef.  The real change needs to come structurally with a focus on grass-fed cattle that are not subject to the factors that require meat to be treated with ammonia.

The issues surrounding cattle feedlots are numerous, so I’ll leave the rest to this fun little video.

A safe and delicious alternative to hamburgers and a vegetarian staple is the black bean burger.  I made some for Rob to enjoy this week, and here is the recipe I used.  My batch was slightly stickier than I would have liked, so I suggest making sure not to cook the rice too long.  I also do not recommend making bean burgers without a food processor or a really, really good blender.  Mashing black beans burger mush with a potato masher is not a good time. 

Black Bean Burgers

3 cups cooked or two 15 ounce cans black beans (other beans work also)

2 cups cooked brown rice

1 cup bread crumbs

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/4 cup chopped scallions

1 Tbs. chili powder

1 Tbs. catsup

1/2 to 3/4 cup water, or as needed to process

Combine black beans, brown rice, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, scallions, chili powder and catsup in food processor, and process, adding just enough water to blend, until smooth. Form into equal-sized patties (makes about 10 depending on size of patties), and chill 1 hour. 

Cook for about 5 minutes on each side in oiled skillet on medium heat.

Enjoy frequently on hamburger buns.

For more great vegetarian, vegan, or gluten-free recipes, check out vegetariantimes.com.  Better yet, subscribe to their magazine and get mouth-watering visuals and fun articles to boot!

A Bite of Bacon

And so it began.  The location was The Skinny Pancake, an excellent restaurant in Burlington, Vermont (for vegetarians and omnivores alike), and the date was December 4, 2010.  It’s somewhat a mystery to me why I chose bacon as my first foray back into the world of meat-eating, but it was what I had been craving.  Bacon has this way of slipping itself into otherwise normal, innocent foods, like salads, and making them some sort of testament to grease and fat.  Bacon has its place, of course, but there seems to be an upswing of bacon additions to dishes where they do not belong.  I often tease Rob about getting his “daily allotment of bacon”, since it is so common it seems like it must be a daily necessity.  However, when I thought about eating meat again, I came back to bacon again and again as the only meat I was truly looking forward to eating.  And so I found myself looking at the menu at the Skinny Pancake and getting excited when it said “Add bacon from Winding Brook Farm, $1.45” for the dish I was considering.  I heard myself requesting bacon added to my Breakfast Monster.  It was an odd sensation.  It tasted delicious.

My next venture into the world of animal flesh came at dinnertime.  We were selecting picnic-type supper fixings at Onion River Co-op (another Burlington favorite for planet-healthy victuals).  I strayed over to the deli counter to select a meat to accompany our bread, mozzarella balls, and olives.  Faced with such an array of deli meat, I felt overwhelmed.  I quickly called on Rob and the attendant for help in picking something that would properly complement the deliciousness we already had collected.  My former self would have found that more than enough for a meal, but I realized that I must expand my idea of a meal to include fleshy protein.  Pastrami was suggested as an acceptable companion, but I realized that I had no idea what pastrami actually was.  After a basic description, I selected it, but had to do some further research later to get to the bottom of the tastiness that is pastrami.  Though I didn’t eat pastrami in the traditional way (warm, on rye bread, with sauerkraut), I did enjoy it very much.  As a vegetarian, I tell myself I’m not missing out on anything by not eating meat, but the plain truth of it is that I am.  Not that I regret being a vegetarian or pine away for meat, but being a vegetarian by definition requires excluding an entire category of food from one’s diet.

However, there are definitely things that I miss about being vegetarian that have to do with the exclusion of an entire category of food.  For instance, when eating out, I have gotten used to looking at the corners of menus, hunting around for the 1-2 options available to me.  Being vegetarian dramatically simplifies the decision-making process of selecting something from a menu.  Although even with limited options, I find myself fraught with indecision, and at restaurants that cater to vegetarians I could spend hours pouring over the menu.  I shudder to think of the pains I will have to take now that the entire menu is open to me!  Old habits are hard to break, and on Sunday when selecting lunch from the Onion River prepared foods buffet, I lapsed back into vegetarianism, disregarded the beef stew, and hunted for the vegetarian options.  It is going to take time to restructure my food selection process.

My digestive system might have a few adjustments to make in regards to this endeavor also.  After my Saturday of omnivorous eating, nausea and discomfort ensued.  Although Rob claimed to also have an upset stomach (he blamed vegetarianism), it does seem that other vegetarians report similar problems once they resume a “normal” diet.  Apparently, the enzymes required to digest protein and fat drop in a person following a vegetarian diet, but quickly build themselves up again, though there seems to be a dearth of actual research on this problem.  However, it seems that starting with small portions or focusing on fish or poultry can ease the return to meat-eating.  Though I went straight for the red meat, I have been limiting my portion size, and have had minimal problems since Saturday.

This brings me to a topic that has been cropping up fairly frequently on this adventure.  Rob and I seem to have varying definitions of a portion, evidenced by his declaration that I wasn’t eating enough of the turkey on Sunday.  I went to mypyramid.gov and entered both of our body-type information to see how much of the meat/bean group we are supposed to be eating every day.  I thought there would be a big difference, but it turns out that I need to eat six ounces and Rob needs to eat seven ounces of the meat/bean group.  There goes my theory that I need far less protein than him.  Thus, I need two 3-ounce servings of protein-rich foods per day.  Mypyramid.gov, being run as it is by the evil bureaucracy of the USDA (I’m not a fan, can you tell?) has little information on what one serving actually is.  Wikipedia saves the day once more, saving me the work of sifting through USDA propaganda.  Also, as I recall from my Weight Watchers days, a 3-ounce serving is the size of the palm of my hand.  So basically, Rob wins this argument.  I need to be eating bigger servings of meat.  I plead indigestion but I have a feeling that argument won’t hold water for much longer. 

Meat I have eaten so far:

• Bacon
• Pastrami (beef)
• Turkey
• Maple sausage (deliciousness from Vermont)
• Chicken

Next post: Black bean burgers, a possible appearance from the Robert, and fun in the kitchen!  In the meantime, check out this sweet website by a fellow Connecticut resident: http://www.thegreenchiclife.com/.  Happy Eating!

A Vacation from Vegetarianism and a Meat-Free Month

Perhaps both are secretly hoping the other will make a permanent switch.  The idea was hatched several months ago, and December was named the month of the great trade.  Genevieve, a vegetarian of two years, will eat meat for a month while Rob tries out vegetarianism temporarily.  The ground rules are that Genevieve has to eat meat at least once a day; Rob eats no meat (including seafood), though he can eat eggs and dairy products (ovo-lacto vegetarianism, which Genevieve practices).  Genevieve agreed to this arrangement because there will likely be a net decrease in meat consumption.  Rob’s reasons for agreeing are hazy at best.  Perhaps he is simply crazy.   

This blog is meant to not only document our adventures with eating/abstaining from meat, but to serve as a resource for sustainable, healthy eating of both vegetarian and meat-eating varieties.  We will try to include resources, further readings, and recipes each post, and hope to inform and motivate people to make healthier, more environmentally-conscious food choices.  As a two-year vegetarian, I realize I am fairly new to this, and would love to hear about different resources and readings than the ones I am familiar with. 

My vegetarianism is motivated by environmental and health concerns.  As an environmental policy major at Michigan State University, the more I learned about the impacts of food production, the clearer I understood that the meat I was consuming had a far greater impact on the environment than other food products.  I could no longer justify eating meat when presented with the adverse effects of modern large-scale meat production.  Therefore, though I have agreed to eat meat for a month, my environmental ideals are still with me, and I will focus on eating sustainably produced meat products, like grass-fed, local, and organic meat.  Rob shares my environmental concerns, and I hope to learn more about healthy, positive meat production.  I will be the main contributor to the blog, but Rob will make occasional appearances, and we will try to keep the viewpoints as balanced as possible. 

December 4 is Day 1 (exactly two years since I became a vegetarian).  For now, enjoy:

http://www.themeatrix.com/