Breakfast Beans

The beans I soaked last night have swollen in the bowl. Plump, burgundy beans like polished beach pebbles and a name like a comic book exclamation. ADZUKI!  I pour them into a large pot and add more water. The screen door lets the last hour of cool air into the kitchen. I play Patsy Cline on a loop. I pull lycra over my head, over my hips. I like how it compresses my flesh, holds me tight, will not budge. The beans begin to boil and the steam smells like hot earth. I fill water bottles, I stuff my pocket with packets of viscous sugar, I leave my bike shoes by the door. When the beans are nearly done I throw a handful of salt in the water. I slice fat crescents of avocado and split cherry tomatoes in half with a sharp, blue knife. I drain the beans and scoop some hot from the colander. A clove of garlic and an egg in the pan. Each bite is muscle flexed and contracted, the turn of the pedals, the cadence quickened, a hill climbed. I eat my meal and picture the ride. An hour later I am winding up the road on my old Trek bike. The acacia still blooms in the shady hollows but most has given way to a thick cloak of jasmine and early California lupine. There are deer on the road, hawks above the vines, flop-eared rabbits half-hidden in the mustard between the rows. The road keeps climbing and to my right the road falls away to a narrow valley of eucalyptus and juniper. There are few cars. There are pot holes. The sun clamps down on me, draws sweat from every inch of skin. From the next bend in the road I can see the Golden Gate Bridge, Mt. Tam, the tiny rectangle of a container ship headed out to sea. The road steepens, steadily climbs, I keep pushing and pulling, my legs burn, my hips burn, every thing is taut, contracted, gripped. Involuntary sound escapes from deep in me, something guttural, animal, the last reserves of effort, and finally my tires find level ground and the blessed tip down hill.

There is something very special and also very logical about feeding the body for fuel. We spend so much time thinking and talking about how we look, and the conversations most overheard about food seem to be about what to eat and what not to eat in order to lose weight, whether that's a health based imperative for someone or not. But what about feeding the body so that it can perform? So that it can run and swim and dance and bike and play? On Sunday I will participate in my first triathlon. I have come to realize that one of the things I most love about training is how I come to re-understand my body as an instrument of action, and not as an object. For 12 weeks I have pushed myself, asked my body to perform tasks it has never done before (ie, getting off a bike and immediately going for a run. What?!), and the way I eat has changed. Of course my food must still taste delicious, but what I want to eat is food that will fuel my body, repair my muscles, sustain a long ride, or a run or a swim. Most of us forget that food in the body, at its most basic level, is energy. What do you do with your fuel? When is the last time you recognized your body for all the amazing work it does, all it is capable of doing? Maybe this week, forget about the mirror, put away the scale. Fuel yourself. Go out and play.

A Bowl of Beans

1 cup of dry beans, rinsed and soaked overnight*, less if you don't want leftover beans

water

salt

1 or 2 eggs

1/4 cup of cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 a firm but ripe avocado, sliced

1 clove of garlic chopped

a handful of broccoli or kale, chopped

1 T coconut oil

olive oil to taste

*You can make this with canned beans too but I prefer the taste and texture of dried beans. Soaking them overnight will shorten the cooking time and make them easier to digest.

Pour the beans and the soaking water into a pot and add more water so the beans are covered by at least an inch of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook until tender. About 30 minutes (might take longer for bigger beans such as kidney beans or white beans).  I recommend testing the beans around 20 minutes and if they are tender but need to cook more, add a good pinch of salt. Salting too early can make the beans shriveled and hard.

Drain the beans in a colander over the sink. Scoop one cup of cooked beans into a bowl. The rest you can use over the coming days in variations on this dish or in other meals.

In a small pan heat the tablespoon of coconut oil over medium-high. Throw in the garlic, broccoli and/or greens and sautee until soft. Add the veggies to your bowl of beans.

Return the pan to the burner. You may need to add a bit more oil. Fry or scramble an egg then place on top of the bean-veg bowl. Add tomatoes and avocado and maybe some fresh herbs and hot sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. 

Maggie's Salad

Last weekend I had the privilege of being a bridesmaid in my friend Bree's wedding. Let me just say, in all my years of working closely with brides and more recently, seeing friends get married, I have never seen anyone so completely unruffled by stress on her wedding weekend. From the second I saw her Friday afternoon, through the hung over post-wedding brunch she was nothing but smiles, beautiful and beaming and clearly having the best weekend of her life. It was a joy to witness. An added bonus to the whole event was the reunion of some of my closest girl friends from high school. Cliche as it is, it is all too true that it does not matter how much time has passed, we drop right back in like we never skipped a beat. The only thing that has changed is each of them has become even more brilliant, more accomplished, wiser and stronger, sharper witted and bigger hearted.

The bittersweet side of the weekend was that I had to say goodbye to my man for a month. Pete's alpine climbing excursions have become common enough that you would think I would be used to saying goodbye. But while it gets easier, it is never easy and I was grateful that after saying goodbye to him in my dear friend Maggie's apartment I got to turn around and fall into a long, tight hug, and the same steady shoulder I have leaned upon, literally and figuratively, since I was 15 years old. After the bender of a weekend and my rattled nerves at sending my love into the icy mountains of Patagonia, I wanted something comforting and nourishing and simple. Salad. I know. It doesn't seem like comfort food but it was. It was as green as a salad can get, (as green as this one, also written about as a comfort food of sorts), and packed with all the things I had leeched out of my body with the weekend's festivities. The salad in and of itself is nourishing and nutritionally pious, no question about it. But the most restorative, nourishing part about it was making it and eating it with Maggie, weaving in and out of conversations covering every aspect of our lives, present, past and future.

There is a lot of emphasis these days on the food going in to our bodies, the value of each individual component, but half the time the way we eat a meal is just as important--if not more so--than the virtue of the meal itself. It doesn't have to be fancy or even particularly inventive. Just made with love, shared with love, and eaten with gusto (and probably a good glass of wine).

I used half of the ingredients we bought and left the other half in Maggie's fridge. When I came home to California, to my empty house, I recreated the dish. While I was throwing it together I got a text from Maggie, "How do I slice this fennel?"  I sent her the answer and sat down with my own green bowl, feeling suddenly a little less lonely, knowing that sturdy shoulder was only a text message away.

Slice the bulb in half...

...and then in half again.

This salad has endless variations. You can use your own favorite dressing, add different green things, more green things, other-colored things.... I added raw pumpkin seeds to mine one day and a poached egg the next. The key, no matter what, is to chop your ingredients to roughly the same size so you get all the flavors and textures in each bite.

Maggie's Salad (serves 2 for dinner)

Two big handfuls of spinach (about 2 cups)

1/2 a small bulb of fennel

One avocado 

2-3 stalks of celery

a handful of basil leaves

half a small head of broccoli

for the vinaigrette

1/2 t raw honey

1/2 t dijon mustard

juice of half a lemon

salt

1/4 cup good, green tasting extra virgin olive oil

Wash the spinach well by submerging it in a bowl of water and lifting the leaves out so the grit settles in the bottom of the bowl. Spin dry and chop roughly.

Trim the fronds from the fennel (you can add some into the salad if you like), and slice the bulb vertically in half, and then in half again. Slice thinly.

Slice the celery the same thinness as the fennel pieces. I cut mine on the diagonal.

Cut the avocado in half and remove the pit. Using a paring knife, slice the flesh three or four times, top to bottom, and then five or six times side to side, making a grid. Using a large spoon, scoop and scrape the avocado out of the skin. Repeat with the other half.

Slice the broccoli head in half, top to bottom and chop the half you are using, roughly, into pieces around the same size as the rest of the veggies.

Stack the basil leaves on top of one another and roll them up like a cigar. Using a good sharp knife (a dull one will bruise it) slice the cigar in thin strips.

Put all the salad ingredients in a large mixing bowl. In a small bowl whisk the honey, mustard, lemon juice and salt together until the ingredients are well integrated and there are no lumps of honey left. Slowly, in a stead stream, whisk the olive oil in. Taste and adjust the acid/salt/sweetness as needed.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently until everything is nicely coated but not drenched. You may not need all the dressing in which case you can store the remainder in a jar at room temperature for a week.

Share with someone you love!