Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Today I had homemade black bean burgers. I've found you can make pretty good homemade legume based burgers with black beans or lentils and they are different enough that I'd consider them different foods. I want there to be a chickpea version but I haven't had much luck... also if I pressure cook chickpeas I'm probably making falafel and hummus.

I've been eating a lot of refried (pinto) bean burritos and tacos with guac and scrambled eggs recently.

Jin+Guice wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 18, 2020 10:17 pm

I want there to be a chickpea version but I haven't had much luck..

Have you tried soaking dried chick beans overnight, and instead of pressure cooking them put them in a reguar pot for 15 minutes or so. They need not be cooked completely, only a little way. I put them in the food processor with onions & herbs. If they won't stick add some oatmeal or cooked buckwheat. Good luck :)

We've just had pancakes with a vegetable filling (peas, carrots, cauliflower, spinach & corn, mixed with butter and cottage cheese). Very delicious.

@horsewoman: Interesting, thanks for the advice. Won't the chickpeas be weird and hard if they aren't cooked all the way? Is this desirable somehow?

@J+G as far as I know "real" falafel are made of soaked, uncooked chickpeas. At least I read that somewhere, gave it a try and found them worlds better. The texture is amazing! So now I make my chickpea burger patties this way as well. There is some info floating around online that uncooked chickpeas are toxic, but I suppose the Middle East would be a lot less populated if this was true and the original falafel are indeed made of soaked-only chickpeas.

Anyway, since the patties/falafel are fried or deep-fried the chickpeas get cooked, only at a later time. We eat them often this way without complaints.

Doing some batch cooking today.

Currently roasting butternut squash for soup (squash, veg broth, garlic, onions—easy and yummy—roasting the squash first makes all the difference).

Cooking salmon and shrimp to take for my mom’s dinner tonight at the nursing home—just putting it on salad, but she’s been craving seafood. Also surprising her with a blueberry pie. (Berries were on sale, I had some pressed crust in the fridge).

Chopping veggies for a brown rice/wild rice/veggie salad.

May make a second pot of soup later in the week—Moroccan red lentil soup recipe I found online.

^^ Nice menu there! I’m sure your mom will be grateful.

Special fried rice. Turns out it's very easy to make

first breakfast was green tea and a whey shake

second breakfast was 2 eggs and an orange

lunch will be diy granola, frozen blueberries, yogurt, banana

afternoon snack i’ll have almonds or pumpkin seeds

dinner tbd, likely: cannellini beans with maybe pasta or potato, some roast chicken, vegetables, apple.

recipes:

the chicken is roasted over vegetables in a sauté pan, then gets parceled out for the week

for the beans, considering this recipe modded to fit what i have: https://www.salepepe.it/ricette/primi/m ... annellini/

Yesterday I've tried a cous cous salad, but we did not like it very much.

So I played it safe today, rice pudding served with homemade (canned) pear puree. Always a hit with my family. I cook the rice in 1/3 water, 1/3 oat milk and 1/3 milk.

Roasted vegetables (eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash) with fish. Easy, yum, and lo cal.

-Egg scramble with cheese, mushrooms, avocado and bacon
-Celery sticks with peanut butter
-Moose steak with broccoli sprouts

I ate a couple of eggs for breakfast today as usual, and then I read the news that France will ban “chick-shredding” at some point in the future.

“Chick shredding?”

So I had to look it up—and saw all manner of atrocities: baby chicks thrown into “macerators” where they get clubbed to death, piled into giant trash bags where they get suffocated... fml...

Since modern industrial chickens of the male sex are useless for egg or meat production they get culled on day 1. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking cage or free range organic pastured whatever. They go in the machine while fully alert. Splat!

I suddenly feel I need to reconsider my breakfast choices... not sure if anything out there matches the glorious egg in terms of taste and price and nutrition, but if apparently the externalities are quite gory and I’m unwilling to create more demand.

Dammit...

Apparently we’re very close to a technological solution where male eggs will be destroyed long before hatching, but I’m not sure when that will be implemented, or by who.

Not really looking forward to tofu scrambles... I’m gonna have to get a little creative here.

Yeah, made me sick to my stomach too. It was a rude awakening. I used to keep chickens when I lived in the sticks, so seeing the chicks destroyed like that was just too disturbing.

Did more research and found out that male broiler chicks are not culled. It's the egg laying breeds where male chicks are found useless (because broiler breeds are more efficient at meat production).

Anyway, just had my "last" couple of guilt-laden eggs an hour ago. Wasn't going to throw them into the garbage, but I won't be resupplying for next week. One week at a time I guess.

I usually eat a fairly light but nutrient dense breakfast so I don't spend a lot of energy digesting during the daytime. So been looking at protein sources: hemp, pea... I already drink whey + eat yogurt so that's enough dairy. Hemp seed is nice but pricey, hemp protein is a good bang for the buck but tastes vile. Pea, I've never tried.

Maybe I'll move the granola + yogurt down to the earlier timeslot, and make for lunch some sort of lentil patty or cold salad I can eat with an orange. Lentils, shallots, olive oil, vinegar... actually sounds very good. Maybe some bits of almond to round out the protein. Yeah.... hmmm... Lentil + garbanzo could alternate. Garbanzo salad is nice with a bit of anchovy or tuna. Ok! I think I've got an outline to proceed.

I'll check out the crispy baked tofu, thanks. I used to like tofu more, but then I tried to eat as an everyday staple and it started to taste disgusting. I fear it now, but there's a sprouted tofu version I might be willing to play with.

We'll see how the eggless experiment goes. I think it's feasible as a start. And will look for a better egg supplier in the meantime. Turns out USA mass egg producers promised in 2016 to end chick grinding by 2020, but just 2 days ago they issued a statement expressing their hopes and wishes that at some point bla bla etc. So it ain't happening any time soon... damn.

breakfast of refried beans, avocado, sour cream, corn chips, cuppa coffee

I had a popsicle last night for dinner—my one meal of the day—and nothing today. In the hospital for gall bladder surgery shortly.

Edith, will send some positive thoughts your way. Hope you can get back to real food very soon.

Yikes! I hope everything goes well for you @EK

I thought I'd mention that I'm having a ton of fun with Imperfect Foods. Not posting this to get anything, but it's fun--each week you get a box of groceries that you can customize, and the food is VERY fresh, but not perfect like at the grocery store. In my box this week I got some of the biggest carrots I've ever seen in my life, but cut up, there're in the pot roast for tonight. I feel like I'm on "Chopped," thinking about what I'm going to make with my box of ingredients.

Tonight: a pot roast I had in the freezer, the giant carrots from the box, potatoes from the box, onions I had on hand, some garlic from the box, celery I had on hand, and an apple pie from stuff I had on hand. I'm having my brother over, and he'll likely take most of the leftovers home. Tomorrow I'm planning to make roasted veggies--potatoes, beets, carrots, onions--sprinkled with feta cheese, and maybe some fish.

The box also had pears this week, blood oranges, regular oranges, tomatoes, asian pears (ate both of those out of hand this morning), blueberries, romanesque cauliflower, green beans... and I think that's it. Lemons, too.

Anyway--it's more fun than Blue Apron, because it's free-form. And cheap. My whole box of stuff, plus add-ons of gnocchi, quinoa and pasta--was $30.

Morning: Two breakfast tacos with pan fried eggs and homemade habanero honey hot sauce and 18 oz. of hot black tea with a splash of whole milk.
Snack: 8 oz. drip coffee, 3 homemade chocolate chip cookies.
Lunch: Homemade chicken curry with potatoes served over a bed of basmati rice.
Snack: 8 oz. drip coffee, 3 Tbsp of chunky peanut butter.
Dinner: 10 homemade pork dumplings and a medium bowl of Thai chicken coconut milk soup.
Post workout meal: 3 tbsp peanut butter served on 2 pieces of toast drizzled with a little honey