Thinking About Stuff: Beans and Legumes

Yesterday, I was thinking how exhausting the planning has been for this Food Stamps Challenge.  This morning, a thought occurred to me.  What if I was never taught to plan meals and cook?  I know that sounds funny, but bear with me.  Over the years I've learned a lot about nutrition and after learning a thing or two about beans and legumes, I began to try to find ways to incorporate them into my diet.  

With this challenge, planning meals meant I needed flexibility on what to cook in relation to the sales.  I'm used to doing that.  I think everybody is used to doing this since the last economic downturn.  Sales shopping is a no-brainer except what if you don't really know how to cook?  But that's another blog.

I realized very early in my planning that I was going to have to substitute a lot of my meat intake with beans.  There just isn't enough money in the budget to eat meat 7 days a week.  If you look at the American diet,  meat is in at least two meals a day.  There's no way I could afford that on SNAP!

Fortunately, I started incorporating bean based recipes in my diet years ago.  But, how many people can look at a package of beans and think to themselves "I can cook different meals six ways to Sunday with these?"  I know I can't.  I know how to make:

Black bean Soup
Lentil Soup
Cuban black beans
Mujadara (middle eastern lentils with rice and onions)
Curried lentils
Felafel (made with chick peas)

Well, on second thought, I can cook beans six ways to Sunday, but I only really know how to make 6 bean based recipes.   What if I didn't?

On SNAP benefits, one would need to know how to make bean based recipes.  I'd like to say I'm expert at it, because according to my nutritionist, as an American I incorporate more beans and legumes into my diet than most, but I'm not.  Yet, she made the point that I incorporate more beans into my diet than her other patients.  Far more than the average American who puts a scoop of kidney beans into their salad or eats a bean burrito a couple of times a week and feels good about going vegan.  It's not enough.

This got me to thinking.  Take the average middle American family that suddenly finds itself in a downturn.  Dad lost his job and can't find another one.  Mom works, but doesn't make enough to pay the bills and buy food.  The family finds itself on SNAP benefits that are half-that of their regular food bills.  They can not continue to eat as they had when their financial picture was better.  They can not continue eating meat seven days a week one, two or even three times a day.

I commented to a friend yesterday that my biggest problem with this challenge was variety.  But that variety centered around meats.  It's a mindset that anyone finding themselves on SNAP needs to get over.  A very difficult thing for an American used to lots of meat in their diet.  Now I understand why the "go to" for families on SNAP is starch like rice and pasta.  It's cheap, filling but doesn't meet nutritional needs without beans.  And if you don't know how to cook beans... you're metaphorically cooked nutrition-wise.