Beans Beans

The musical fruit!

I have always liked a good marinated bean salad but have never actually tried making it myself. I've had the best bean salad in the world up in Tehachapi at The Apple Shed, alongside the best chicken salad sandwich in the world. The Apple Shed is a long drive just to have some bean salad, though, so I've tried the canned versions from the grocery store and found them way too vinegary and sour. So, bi-annual trips to Tehachapi have always included bean salad at The Apple Shed.

I recently went through old cookbooks and magazines and ripped out any recipes that sounded good and low carb and found a bean salad recipe that I put aside to try.

It came out good, very mild flavor and not overpoweringly vinegary. It uses a very small amount of oil so the calories stay down and beans are way good for you.

I doubled the recipe because my Winco doesn't carry small cans of vegetables and I don't think kidney beans even come in small cans, so...

Here is the original recipe if you can find the small cans, and I added a can of garbanzo beans to this because a bean salad really has to have garbanzos in it as far as I'm concerned. This made a huge bowl of salad that seems like it will last forever even though we've had it with dinner and I've had some with my lunches so far this week.



Marinated Three Bean Salad (or however many different kinds of beans you want)

1 8 1/2 oz can red kidney beans, drained
1 8 oz can cut wax beans or lima beans, drained
1 8 oz can cut green beans, drained
1/2 cup chopped onion (I used sweet onion, red onion would be good, too)
1/2 cup chopped green pepper (or red or whatever color you want)
1/2 cup vinegar ( I used some white wine vinegar because I had two bottles of it in the cupboard for some reason- I think it may be responsible for the milder not so vinegary flavor)
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp water
1 tbsp salad oil
1 tsp celery seed
1 clove garlic, minced (I left this out because garlic does not agree with me anymore)

In a medium mixing bowl (or large if you are using the big cans of beans) combine beans, onion, and green pepper.

For dressing, in a screw top jar (or a tupperware container like I did because I don't have a screw top jar) combine vinegar, sugar, water, salad oil, celery seed, and garlic. Cover and shake well. Add to vegetables, stir lightly. Cover and refrigerate for 4 to 24 hours, stirring often. Serve with a slotted spoon. Makes 6 servings (or 12 if you are doubling)

This has only 87 calories a serving with 16 grams of carbs, but they are good bean carbs. It also has 3 grams of protein.

Crustless Quiche

This would probably be even better with a CRUST but when you are doing the low carb thing you can't have crust, so...

This is a tasty, cheap, and easy dinner or breakfast or lunch or whatever. Even though we did have to buy a quiche pan the first time I tried out this recipe, but I found one over at World Market for about $5.00.

Here's the recipe. We had some carrots alongside this last night, but I'm sure you creative folks out there could think of other side dishes. Maybe fruit salad or green salad.

6 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream (whipping cream)
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup grated cheese (swiss, cheddar, whatever)- the first time I made this I used cheddar, last night I used monterey jack and I like the jack cheese in this better.

Now, if you want to add diced ham or chopped up bacon to this, you need about 1/2 cup.

Preheat oven to 350. Butter the quiche pan.
Beat the eggs in a bowl with the cream and salt and pepper.
Add the cheese and any bacon or ham, mix well, pour into the buttered quiche pan.
Bake for 40 minutes.
Serve hot, warm, or at room temp.

I'm not sure what we are having for dinner tonight but whatever it is will be made out of things we already have on hand. We've got chicken breasts and canned beans so I'm thinking it will be grilled (or baked or whatever) chicken breasts and canned beans. No money will change hands at the grocery store today.

Bionic Kitty Ears and Almonds and Other Fun Snacks

While doing our little bit of grocery shopping this weekend, little because we were on a really really really tight budget and no, you can't have that and you can't have that because we can't afford it this week, we looked around the crunchy granola organic section of Save Mart and found a few healthy low carb diet friendly products to try.

First off I found this big bag of almonds at a fairly reasonable price of $6.99. Almonds are expensive but you get a lot in this bag and they are grown right here in CA so I'm helping out the almond growers here in our state, and almonds are a good for you snack and they have lots of good things inside them. These are Golden Gate brand, and all that is in them is almonds, olive oil, and sea salt. No spray on flavors or weird tasting preservatives. Just roasted almonds. Packed in Ripon, CA, which I don't know where that is and I'm too lazy to google it right now, but wherever Ripon CA is, these are by far the best tasting almonds I've ever tried! No, I did not get any free almonds for my testimonial, but if the Golden Gate Nut Company would like to SEND me some free almonds I certainly wouldn't turn them down.

So, now we've got almonds, but the handy dandy reclosable bag that they come in sounds EXACTLY like the bag that the cat treats come in and all I have to do is barely touch the cat treat bag and in a split second I have six cats milling about waiting for their treats. So last night I was really hungry and thought I'd have some almonds and had to give six cats their treats not once but twice because after my first handful of almonds I went back for more. Today I will put the almonds into some other container so that I can eat them without six cats thinking I am eating their treats.




I found a few more snacks we tried. These granola bars are made by Nature's Path, and they are organic, have lots of whole grain in them, and omega 3's and have some protein and are low sodium, and dang, do these taste good! We tried the pumpkin-n-spice flavor first, then the next day I went back for the apricot and yogurt ones. They also make other flavors but Save Mart only has these two kinds. Very very tasty, and again, Nature's Path, free ones would be just fine. These are a little more expensive than most granola bars, but for the quality and taste and lack of junky stuff in them, pretty much worth the price.


Then I found a bunch of these bars made by Kind, about 6 or 7 different flavors, and the low glycemic index and 5g of fiber made me want to try these. They are also gluten and wheat free, low sodium and no sulphur dioxide. They are a little pricey at about $1.59 each, but dang, are these good! Good like candy bar good! I had one that had pineapple and coconut in it and it was yummy indeed.


We were also looking for lemonade for Keith, the doctor told him to drink a glass a day but I forget what for, something about acid? I don't know, but as we are reading the ingredients in the lemonades, and yes, we could make our own, but come on now, I'm LAZY like that, we find that all of them are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Not good. We found this Simply Lemonade that is simply that, lemonade made with real sugar. And it's good, a little tart, but good. A little more expensive than the corn syrupy lemonades, but again, worth it.


Moral of the story? Sometimes it's good to pay a little more when it comes to eating healthier.