Sunday, February 12, 2017

Dinner tonight, etc.

I spent the night at a friend's house last night because I played Special Music at Westchester United Methodist Church this morning and since we were in Lake Elsinore all day yesterday, we didn't feel like getting up at even earlier o'dark-thirty than we already had to. All of that is to explain why I don't have a weigh-in pic today; I didn't have my scale with me! 

I also didn't have my Ninja blender with me, so I didn't have my breakfast smoothie, which makes me sad. (I love my smoothie!) Instead, we stopped at McDonald's and I had an Egg McMuffin with no muffin. So, basically just an egg covered with cheese and some bacon. Not awesome, but hey, I made do. 

After we got home - and after a nap! - I made dinner. I had a couple of chicken breasts thawed in the fridge, so I rinsed and dried them, then seasoned them with salt and pepper, and baked them at 450° for 20 minutes. 

Meanwhile, I sautéed some onions in a pan, added a crushed clove of garlic and once they were translucent, added some homemade chicken broth. I brought that to a boil and then added my sprouted white beans & speckled pinto beans. I covered the pan and let it cook for 5 minutes. While it was cooking, I used my Ninja food processor to slice up a small zucchini and a carrot. 

I have no commercial interest in Ninja, which is a shame because I love the blender/food processor/smoothie cup combo thingy we got last year at Costco! Every time I use it, I love it more! It's so well-designed, easy to use, easy to clean, sturdy, and super powerful. I am a happy Ninja customer! 👍

After slicing the veggies, I added my sprouted mung beans and lentils to the pan, covered it, and let it cook for a few minutes. 

When the timer for the chicken went off, I took it out of the oven and spooned about a teaspoon of my yummy Onion Jam onto each piece. No, my jam is not low-carb, which is why I use just a smidgen of it for flavor. I covered the chicken with a piece of foil and let it rest for about 10 minutes. I'll post my recipe in a future post. 

Back to the veggies! I added the zucchini and carrot to the pan, along with some salt and pepper, some marjoram, and some savory, stirred, covered the pan and cooked it for a couple of minutes, then added some frozen green onions I had on hand. Covered, and let cook on low until the chicken finished resting. 

Here's the result:

 

My dinner beverage was cold tea, a mix of green tea and Earl Grey. I have 2 quart-sized mason jars that I use to steep tea. I fill the jar with water - sometimes I use cold, other times hot, but I can't tell the difference so I'll probably just use cold from now on - and let it steep overnight. I finished my jar with dinner, so I started a new one:

 

Tomorrow morning, I'll take out the tea bags (and throw them into the compost bin) and put the jar in the fridge. 

See that lid on the jar? That's a "recap" lid from a Kickstarter campaign I sponsored a few years ago. They come in both regular and wide-mouth sizes and I have a few of each. I use them for my tea and also when I ferment stuff in jars (with the addition of a rubber cork and a water trap - more on that in another post). 

Since I used up all my sprouted beans making dinner, I also started some new sprouts:

 

Left to right is garbanzo beans, a mix of white beans and speckled pinto beans, and a mix of green lentils and mung beans. I put about 1/3 cup of each bean in a jar and then cover them with water. I'll let them sit overnight and in the morning, I'll pour out the water, rinse the beans in a mesh strainer, and fill the jars with more water and let them sit for the day tomorrow, too. 

By that time, the garbanzo beans should be finished, so I'll rinse them and dry them and put them in the fridge to use this week. The lentils and mung beans (after rinsing) will go into my tray sprouter for another day. The pinto and white beans will probably need to soak overnight again. They are bigger and harder than the other beans, so take longer to soak - I soak them until none of them are wrinkly anymore. 

Another advantage to sprouting these beans before using them is that sprouting greatly reduces the amount of the sugars in the beans, which is great for those doing low carb, but also eliminates the flatulence associated with eating beans. Any amount of soaking is good for beans, but soaking them for 2 days seems to work best for me! 

Here's an interesting article I found about soaking beans:


And an article from Whole Foods which lists different types of beans:


One word of caution: while most soaked & sprouted beans are ok to eat raw in salads or just by the handful, kidney beans contain a substance that can really upset your stomach if eaten raw, so be sure to cook them before eating. Here's an article about that:


.

No comments:

Post a Comment