Organic Bean Salad

Beans—fiber, protein, sometimes gas-producing. Yum?

Yep.

If you’d told me as a child that one day I’d not only be eating beans, but actually consuming them by choice, I’d have thrown a tater tot at you. Age and nutritional understanding led me to put down the tater tots and reach for food that doesn’t require dredging a mound of ketchup before eating.

I ran across a colorful bean salad while at a conference in New York, but was disappointed in its taste. A mayonnaise-ish film coated the beans, and the spices weren’t quite right. I liked the basics though, and as soon as I got home, I set about making my own version of a bean salad. It’s quick, cheap, and addictive (kinda like tater tots, right?).

I use all organic ingredients (except the vinegar, which I can’t find locally in an organic variety). You’ll need:

1 can black beans

1 can dark red kidney beans

1 can garbanzo beans

1 can no-salt-added corn

Extra virgin olive oil

Red wine vinegar

Sea salt

Black pepper

Rinse and drain the beans and corn in a colander. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and stir, taking care not to smash the beans. I go light on the oil—about one tablespoon—and heavy on the vinegar. I also don’t use a set amount of salt and pepper, but frequent taste-testing will tell you when you have the right mix. Cover and refrigerate the salad for a few hours, then stir and eat with friends.

I’m pretty impressed with my bean salad, both for its simplicity and good flavor. Make your own version and let me know how it goes.

Some days, or weeks, life seems to work against fitness ambition. The second week of November epitomized that week for me. I decided to run my second-ever 5K, and was hoping for perfect preparation. Instead, here’s what I got, blow-by-blow, with no ugly details spared:

• Forgot to bring dinner to work, so had to buy on-site meal that tasted a little funky. Became close acquaintance of toilet most of the following day.
•  Night before the race, reluctantly went to dinner with friends. Still skeptical of prepared food after very recent recovery from flushfest. Ordered chicken salad, got a beautifully prepared dinner plate, stuck my fork in the salad, and found a ginormous human hairball in the middle. Chicken, mayonnaise, and hair. Enough said.
• Went home to get some rest before race (and try to get hairball image out of my head), choked on a gulp of water, ran to the sink to spit it out, and rammed my forehead into the stainless steel faucet. Small goose egg, big headache.
• Bedtime routine seemed like a safe haven. Took long, warm shower to wash away the food poisoning, hairball, and possible concussion. Stepped out of shower onto plush rug and a sizable shard of porcelain from a broken nicknack. Pain, blood, and defeat. I’d cut the bottom of my foot less than 12 hours pre-race! 

Luckily, after some careful washing and Band-Aiding, the week’s drama was over, and I went to sleep. And, shockingly, I didn’t fall out of bed or trip over a dog in the middle of the night. Perhaps this week backs up the no pain, no gain theory– I ran a more than three-minute personal best, which required powering (and wheezing) through the race at a pace I never imagined running. I do hope the next pre-5k week is at least hairball-free though. I’d sacrifice a few seconds of gain to be spared that pain.

Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt

Yogurt and I have had our ups and downs. I know it’s basically healthy, and makes a good addition to a daily diet, but too often I’m left wondering when the real snack will arrive. Since I swear by organic milk, I decided to give organic yogurt a try. I reasoned that if I’m going to eat yogurt, I might as well choose the healthiest possible from what is a disturbingly large selection of brightly packaged yogurt at the grocery store. Stonyfield Farm Organic Lowfat Blueberry Yogurt jumped out from the crowd, in large part because a contemplative-looking cow wearing a monocle peers out from the logo.

Stonyfield Farm’s 6oz of yogurt was a bit pricier than other varieties, but that’s to be expected when buying organic. The plastic cup is labeled as a 5 for recycling, which made me feel good about my choice, since a lot of yogurt cups still aren’t coded for anything but the landfill. Organic blueberries are listed as the second ingredient, and I expected a nice portion of “fruit on the bottom” once I stirred the cup.

The most striking and immediate difference between Stonyfield’s yogurt and other brands I’ve had in the past is the smell. Upon peeling back the lid, a much more pungent, yogurty smell met my curious nostrils. The yogurt was almost pure white, as is often the case with “fruit on the bottom” varieties. A quick stir turned up the pleasant purple I expected, plus a sizable (but not huge) portion of blueberries. After a few more stirs, I gave the yogurt a taste.

Overall, it was very good, and somehow felt healthier than non-organic yogurt. Maybe that was a marketing trick, but I don’t think so. Stonyfield’s yogurt isn’t as thick, smooth, or sugary-tasting as mainstream products, but it’s reasonably filling and satisfying. Sure, it’s what some people would call a “sugar bomb,” but I’m not diabetic, and I prefer naturally milled organic sugar to lab-created sweeteners. I would’ve liked to have had more blueberries in the mix, but otherwise I was happy. Equally as importantly, I felt good– like I’d chosen a healthy snack that truly was healthy, rather than disguised as such.

Basic nutrition ticker: 6oz, 130 calories, 1.5g fat, 5mg cholesterol, 110mg sodium, 22g carbohydrate, <1g fiber, 21g sugar, 6g protein, plus a nice dose of calcium and vitamin D and a trace of vitamin A.

Balance Bare Bar image from amazon.com

Like most athletes and busy people, I’ve eaten my fair share of protein bars, nutrition bars, granola bars, and pretty much every other type of fortified food compressed into bar form. Some have been disgusting. Some have been hard to chew. Some have melted all over the front of my pristine, white work uniform.

Every once in a while, a bar tastes good, and I gotta hand it to Balance Bar for their Bare product. The wrapper proclaims it as a “nutrition energy bar” with “sweet & salty peanut butter natural flavor with other natural flavor.” Sometimes the “flavor” thing can be sketchy– like when companies turn chemicals into a food that actually tastes like fruit– but the Balance Bare tastes great.

I chose the bar instead of its multitude of competitors because it wasn’t a super-duper-muscle-builder, and because it was on sale for less than a dollar. The picture on the wrapper looked pretty good too, and I figured I could stomach it in a pinch. A packed Friday found me in that pinch, and I opened the wrapper with disappointment waiting in the wings. Let’s face it– most of these things, even if they’re good, are only good relative to their unpalatable brothers and sisters.

Balance Bare surprised me. It not only tasted good, but I didn’t feel too full or too empty after eating it. Chopped peanuts were interspersed between little chunks that tasted similar to Rice Krispies (but were really a conglomeration of lots of sometimes bizarre ingredients), and the peanut buttery base layer was sweet without being too much like candy. I drank a glass of milk and ate some strawberries to feel like I’d really had lunch, but the bar saved the day by not forcing me to interrupt business by going to the grocery store.

Seriously though, I’m going to research “fractionated palm kernel oil.” Try as I may, I’m not a dietary perfectionist, but something about eating anything fractionated sounds like a bad idea. Stay tuned for my findings.

Basic nutrition ticker: 1.76oz, 210 calories, 9g fat, 0mg cholesterol, 300mg sodium, 22g carbohydrate, 3g fiber, 11g sugar, 13g protein, plus a bounty of fortifying vitamins and minerals.