The Magical Fruit

You may already know about beans, but in case you don’t, here’s an oddly overwhelming and confusing Wikipedia article about them. Maybe it is important to distinguish what is of the family Fabaceae, and what is not, but either way, it doesn’t change the taste, which is delicious.

On top of that, they’re so good for you. Beans: crazy high in fiber, antioxidants, and protein, and way low on all the other crap — especially price. In fact, just yesterday at the grocery store they were half off of the already insane $1.50 per can. I got to be That Lady With the Extra Cart for The Beans at the checkout. What I’m saying is, you should eat beans for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner every day while we still don’t know how they are secretly killing us. Don’t worry, I’ve got a super-easy, adaptable NO COOKING INVOLVED recipe for you, but first, some NSFW tunes.

The rapper Beans freestyling, or a rap about beans (of a sort)? You pick.

Crank dat.

Now here is the basic idea of the recipe: can of beans, a bit of something pungent (garlic, ginger, shallot, onion), acid (vinegar, lemon), salt, some sort of pepper, whatever oil.

The possibilities are endless, so here’s my personal fave:

1 can of cannellini or butter beans, rinsed to remove salt and that weird sludge
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp salt
½ tsp red pepper flakes
1 clove of garlic, CRUSHED

Stir all the ingredients together. In a total of three minutes, you have a bangin’ ass lunch! Go wild with additions if you want. You’ve got your protein covered, so veggies or herbs or cheese or all of the above work really well. Today I’m having mine with tomato and some mozzarella. Tomorrow could be:

2 cups (equal to 1 can) shucked edamame
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 or ½ tsp sesame oil (this stuff is so strong — you don’t need a whole tablespoon!)
½ tsp salt OR soy sauce
½ tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp fresh grated ginger

Maybe toss in some steamed, diced carrots and rice noodles? I dunno!? Too many options, so try them all. The more you eat, the better you’ll feel, as they say.