Thursday, April 9, 2009

Gimme Bean, Beans, and More Beans for the Summer

Going into this important summer, I decided I wanted to prepare some food in advance to alleviate some stress on myself. I have a deep freezer in my kitchen and am planning on filling it with various items for those nights I come home from practice and am dead tired and don't want to cook. Last weekend beans were on the agenda. They are one of the healthier foods you can eat.

Saturday night before I went to sleep I poured about seven bags of beans into a huge pot. I filled it with water and went to sleep. The ratio of beans to water was probably about one part beans and three parts water. I woke up Sunday morning and went downstairs to inspect the situation. To my utter surprise the pot was completely overflowing with beans. It was a bean eruption. I couldn't believe it. I had more beans than I knew what to do with. I started to cook the beans and had three pots bubbling and steaming.

The concoction I planned on preparing included an assortment of kidney, white, black, refried and pinto beans. In addition to this I mixed in blanched kale, sauteed onions and mushrooms, diced tomatoes, some garlic and some carrot juice. When all was said and done I probably had upwards of 15-20 pounds of food. I literally couldn't believe how much food I had. The entire ordeal took me six hours to complete. (The cooking was a workout in itself.) In all I filled 22 Tupperware containers.

I'm really happy I spent a day in the kitchen and have already reaped some benefit from all the work I did! This week, for example, I had a killer schedule--five mornings of practice, weights plus afternoons and Saturday morning. You don't always feel like cooking on nights like tonight. My ready-to-eat beans are tasty, easy to make and full of protein. The kale is jam-packed with antioxidants and is said to help reduce inflamation. All that is pretty good when you're totally stressing your body.

Accomplishing our dreams requires a lot of planning and preparation...and sometimes beans! This is just one little piece of my puzzle that is going to help me reach my goals!

8 comments:

Nicole said...

sounds fun!

Mary said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mary said...

Just to prove I don't eat Lucky Charms all the time, here's a quick and easy recipe I eat a lot:

Garbanzo beans
Diced tomato
Diced onion
Diced red pepper
Broccoli

Kind of a chick pea salad, basically. You can put avocado in it too which is also really good. Store it in the fridge, drizzle with olive oil and vinegar when you're ready to eat... Yum. You should give it a try if you're ever sick of the 20 pounds of other beans you cooked, haha.

(Deleted my own post... Smart.)

Marcelo said...

"It was a bean eruption". It`s funny to imagine. Do you that here in Brazil we have a lot of poor people and the most common food is black beans with rice. It is very nutritional and very cheap. I like it very much... We call "feijoada" he he...

Well, good luck in all!

Marcelo from mundodanatacao.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Beans, beans, they make you smart.
The more you eat, the more you...

Never mind! ;=)

Unknown said...

Beans, beans, they're good for your heart. The more you eat, the more you...

The more you ... the better you feel, so eat your beans for every meal!!

SwimFast!

Anonymous said...

so do you actually plan on eating that every night? will they ever go bad if you don't eat them fast enough?

Jeff Lee said...

Whenever "bean" and swimming is mentioned almost near each other i can't help but think of the game of "bean":

http://www.floswimming.org/videos/coverage/view_video/234427/106456-4-the-bean

I actually knew about it back in 2004 when a club teammate who finished his first season with USC came back to swim during winter break, but had no idea even top level swimmers all across the country played it too until the floswimming video. So do you play it? Who are the best players on the natl team?

(You can just tell that I've been always dying to ask you these for the longest time-i just forgot to haha)


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