A Break from the Nervous Breakdown - BEANS!!

Ah, something I can control! My beloved beans!

A few days ago, I read this post I had saved in my cardfile from 2010 by a member named Essie on the Fuhrman message boards:

Pinto Beans in Gravy
(Copied from another thread. Ha ha, I get to quote myself.)
Quote:
Pinto beans are naturally pretty creamy, especially if you cook them yourself and let them break apart a bit so they make their own gravy.
Put some chopped onion, celery, carrots, dried oregano, whatever, in to cook with them and let those get completely soft and disappear as the beans cook.
Then scoop up a single portion of the tender beans in their own gravy, stir in about a Tbs of tahini and a tsp or so of nutritional yeast.
Tahini will provide the richness of the butter, as well as more body, and the veggies in your broth (especially celery) and nutritional yeast will give it a savory taste. If your DH likes mushrooms, you could put water-sauteed mushrooms or dried mushrooms in as well. 

Simple, easy, and really can't be messed up! Just my kind of recipe! And I certainly have plenty of pinto beans on hand right now.

So, I took a bag of Goya pinto beans I had on my bean shelf. Hmm, this one is dated June 2020, and since Goya beans are usually dated at least 2-3 years ahead of when I purchased them, this is at least a 2 year old bag of beans. So I put them on for a little soak, letting them sit on the stove in a pot of water for 4 hours. They're so small that I knew a full overnight soak or a quick-soak by boiling the water and letting them sit for an hour would be too much for these little things.

After all the lunch dishes were washed I rinsed the beans off, poured them into the Instant Pot with 6 cups of fresh water, about a quarter cup of dehydrated celery, a quarter cup of dehydrated carrots, a cut up Vidalia onion, and a few tablespoons of dried mushrooms, then hit the Bean button.

After letting it cook and come down from pressure naturally I tossed about half a bag of frozen chopped spinach, a few tablespoons of nutritional yeast, and yes, a tablespoon or 2 of tahini. Jeff Novick makes a sauce out of it, so why can't I use a bit in a full pot of beans!

When it was getting close to dinner time I got out the rice cooker and tossed in the Carolina jasmine brown rice. Darn - I didn't have quite 2 of those little rice cups left in the bag. There was another bag in another room, but I was too lazy to go get it. I did have a lot of quinoa in the same kitchen cabinet as the rice, so I filled the rest of the cup with tri-color quinoa. Also into the rice cooker with the rinsed grains I tossed a tablespoon of dehydrated garlic granules and about 3 tablespoons of the dehydrated soup vegetables.  Filled the rice cooker with water a teensy bit above the 2 cup mark to compensate for the dried veggies and cooked that all up. I love my rice cooker! I could never consistently get good rice in the Instant Pot, but have never had a failure in a rice cooker.

Now I know Dr. McDougall says to limit our beans to an average of a cup a day, but in these trying times, a don't think a little protein splurge is going to do much harm. None of the other WFPB docs like Esselstyn or Fuhrman limit beans. We each had a nice sized bowl of rice and beans, then had a much smaller amount as seconds. The rest is put away for lunch.

The same day I made this bean meal, what should appear on YouTube but another Ann & Jane Esselstyn cooking video, this one on making beans from scratch! Ann broke her quarantine to go to Jane's house to watch Jane's husband Brian Hart make this batch of spicy black beans.


I agree with Ann that the beans would be just fine without all those spices, but when the stay-at-home order is lifted and the virus numbers start dropping in our area instead of doubling each day like they did the past week, we already planned on hitting Lowe's and stocking up on more Bone Sucking Sauce, so we'll grab a bottle of the Bone Sucking Rub, too. My husband watched the video with me and practically drooled at the screen, and was happy when I said we'll get the stuff and I'll make it as soon as I can. He asked if it could be made with the Bone Sucking Sauce itself, and I said it probably could, so I have a feeling black beans (But in the Instant Pot, not in the Wonder Bag like they did) will be on the menu for Easter Week. But I'll be making 2 different batches - one seasoned this way for my husband and one without seasoning for me. There is no way on Earth I would eat something cooked with a few tablespoons of chili powder!!! My throat is burning just thinking about it!!