I have bad memories of bean salad. I think the picture says it all. Those cans of sad, soggy, limp legumes in a putrid, sweet and tangy “vinaigrette” put bean salad to shame. For that reason, I rarely include beans in my salad. But this weekend I was in the mood for a light lunch that was heavy on the protein and raw veggies and light on preparation. Thus I rediscovered the beauty of a bean salad.
For me, a bean salad needs to be more salad than bean. Case in point: Saturday’s lunch, featuring butter beans!
You’ll observe in the photo on the right that the butter beans are mostly hidden by glorious mounds of fresh veggies, including mixed leaves, broccoli, red onion, carrot, tomato, mushrooms, and avocado. I dressed it simply in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and a little dash of oregano.
Sunday brought another excuse for beans, when I made pizza for dinner. I wanted to round out the bready main dish with a little protein, so I took some inspiration from this Mediterranean Chickpea Salad from the New York Times and threw together some chickpeas, cucumber, red bell pepper, red onions, and kalamata olives with some lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano. Delicious!
All of this has me in a bean salad mood. Do you have any tasty recipes to share?
Diary for Saturday, March 7, 2009
Swim
Knee was bugging me so swam with the buoy. 1200 meters.
Breakfast
Bircher Muesli with Bananas
Lunch
English Breakfast without all the Englishy Bits
Toast, grilled mushrooms and tomato, steamed spinach. Not shown: a little avocado for my toast.
Snack
Grapaefruit
Dinner
Tofu Scramble with Toast and Spring Greens
Diary for Sunday, March 8, 2009
Swim
Still taking it easy on the ol’ knee. A mega easy slow and steady 600 meters.
Breakfast
Bircher Muesli
Lunch
Butter Bean Salad
Dinner
Pizza with Chickpea Salad
And a little raw spinach, tomato and onion for good measure. The pizza was topped with Tim’s tomato sauce, onion, broccoli, mushrooms, fresh red chilis, and buffalo mozzarella. I put WAY too much red chili on this… luckily all was not lost; I only put chili on a couple slices.
Organic Pitfield’s Eco Warrior Beer
A treat! I love this stuff.
Small Glass of Campofiorin
It probably would have been a Large Glass if there had been more wine left from last week’s Italian meal.
Comments