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.

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.