I’m here to sing the praises of eating more beans and legumes. I can’t think of a single food that has had more impact on my life – and not always in a good way.
As a child, I hated beans. I remember going to my friend Becky’s house for a sleepover, and for dinner, her mother made some sort of dish with macaroni and kidney beans. I vividly recall puking it up in Becky’s bedroom a couple of hours later. I was not invited back.
My taste buds evolved as I got older, but I still didn’t eat beans or other legumes because I had what we used to call a sensitive stomach. I had trouble digesting beans and vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage, which I nicknamed, “Death Vegetable.” I would have horrible gas pain and bloating, and to me, it wasn’t worth it.
In the category of strange but true, my digestive issues resolved after my cancer surgery in 1999. The operation included removing my omentum, which is a curtain of fatty tissue that hangs down from the stomach and liver and wraps around the intestines. The omentum is thought to aid in digestion, but maybe because mine was diseased it had the opposite effect? Or maybe whilst tooling around in my gut, the surgeon unkinked something that now allowed me to enjoy beans and cruciferous vegetables?
I don’t know what happened, but after the surgery at age 43, I began to slowly introduce these foods into my diet. And then later in my 50s, I read about people in the Blue Zones of the world who live long, healthy lives. Most of them eat a lot of beans. Additionally, eating a daily serving of cooked beans is linked with lower levels of “bad” low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. I upped my game.
My husband always loved beans and legumes, so it made dinner easier. We discovered a mutual tolerance for unpleasant odors, since it did take time for my body to adjust as I increased fiber in my diet. No horrible bloating gas like I had when I was young – just painless flatulence, which Dale says is the sign of a healthy metabolism. But this comes from a guy who would sign his farts if he could.
We all know something will get us eventually, but since improving my diet by reducing sugar, eating more fruits and vegetables, eating oatmeal for breakfast several days a week and consuming beans or legumes daily, all the numbers in my lipid profile markedly improved, and my bad cholesterol dropped by 17 percent. After a lifetime fooling around with irritable bowel syndrome, I have no issues with either constipation or diarrhea.
Black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, black-eyed peas and all kinds of lentils are now pantry staples. Hearty bean soups make an especially good lunch – I cook big batches to freeze in individual servings. If you’re working, you can defrost at home and put it in a wide-mouth mason jar to reheat in the microwave at the office. I kept a little squirt bottle of good olive oil in my credenza as a topper!
Cookbooks and websites are loaded with recipes that use legumes, but here are three new favorites:
In my opinion, all beans and legumes taste better if you make them from scratch. Once you get used to cooking dry beans, you will never want to use canned again. The Instant Pot®, which is an electric pressure cooker, makes it fast and easy – we would starve without ours.
I pretty much love all food, but if I had to, I would give up meat before I’d give up beans. Just don’t make me think about giving up cheese.
…and it’s divine to have a small bit of cheese after a bean or lentil soup!
In my childhood there was only one sort of lentils which were cooked to death with a good portion of very fat bacon. I hated this.
Now I discovered all sort of beans an lentils in Organic Shops and love them all. They are so versatile to prepare, italian style, indian spiced, with passata of tomato and coconut cream, with Pesto from Persil or Lemon Zests on the italian version.Sometimes I put an fried egg on top. I never get tired of the good stuff.
During summertime I serve beans as a lukewarm salad with vinegar and Olive oil, with maybe a bit of good canned tuna and bread.
Hope to get my hands on an Instant Pot as soon they are restocked on Amazon.
The drop of 17 percent of your LDL is impressive.
Everything you just described sounds absolutely wonderful. I have some of the old brown lentils left, but when they are gone, they probably won’t be replaced. My favorites are the French green lentils. I LOVE the idea of putting a fried egg on top. The salad sounds great, too. I just bought a can of Ortiz tuna. It’s supposed to be great — have you tried that? I think the tuna is from Spain. Also, if you like Indian, I can’t recommend that book highly enough. The food I’ve made from it is better than most I’ve had in Indian restaurants.
Yesss, Ortiz is very good. It’s also my first choice of Tuna and their Anchovy. Saupiquet is another good brand.
One thing I forgot to mention: if you buy your Parmesan cheese in a whole piece, there ist a hard end which you can’t grate. Cut of a thin layer (where is written “Parmigiano Reggiano”) and cook the piece with your bean soup. Remove before serving. This enhances the taste of the soup.
I have often been in the southern part of Italy which is still a very poor area. Parmesan cheese was a rarity and La Mamma whould not have thrown away a crumb of it.
And I learned to love recipes with lemon (don’t you have those wonderful Meyer Lemons?).
For easter I plan to braise lamb shoulder which I serve with “Gremolata” (Lemon Zest, Persil and Garlic, all minced).