Tag: legume

Lentils

May you acquire a plentitude of coins…

Here’s a lucky food for New Year’s Day. Italians have a tradition of eating lentils at the stroke of midnight to usher in wealth for the coming year. Because lentils look like coins. There are only two problems with this: Lentils don’t really look like coins, and no one gets rich because they have a lot of coins. But lentils are are worth discussing anyway…

Lentils are super old. They’ve been found in human settlements from 11,000BC. They are nutritionally spectacular, packing as much protein per ounce as steak and a ton of fiber, too. And they are pretty much our eco-friendliest crop. So, you know, if you want to keep living here on Earth, tuck into good-luck-lentils a little more often.

You can prepare lentils in about 5,000 ways. Here is an incomplete list of ideas: Lentil soup, red lentil dal, lentil burgers, lentil salad, misir wat, lentil fritters, marinated lentils, lentil hummus. Basically, if you type “lentil” before any food a google search, you will find a recipe for it. And some of those recipes might even be good. Use your own judgement, please.

Finally, if you’re like me, you cannot think of lentils without thinking of The Young Ones. Which is a British comedy series from the 80s that you should watch if you like lentils. I think it brings good luck for the New Year. 

Baked Beans

This illustration shows a giant can of beans sitting in a park. A man and his dog look on.

A journey of beans…

It’s Boxing Day, so I’ll talk about a British fav: Beans.

Native Americans were baked bean experts: baking them underground with bear meat and maple syrup. The result was predictably delicious. Then British colonists said, cool, we’ll make these, too. Let’s use pig meat and brown sugar, instead. And maybe we can cook them over a fire for a while before we bake them. That was also tasty. But due to British taxes on sugar, the colonists changed the recipe again to use locally produced molasses as a sweetener.

In 1895, H.J. Heinz Co. started producing canned baked beans, which were not baked at all, but rather blanched and steamed in the can. Those beans were the first convenience beans to be sold overseas. To the United Kingdom, of course. (See how this story keeps looping back on itself?) Anyway, British folks were like, why are these beans so sweet, you weirdos? So the recipe was altered again. Now the British beans had a firmer texture and were nestled in a tomato sauce. They were no longer sweet.

Today, baked beans are available in a ton of varieties. You can see ‘em with BBQ or at a picnic or in your Full English. And you can even buy that British version of Heinz baked beans. In the international section of your grocery store.

This is a long story, but a pretty good reminder that all food is political. It’s never just a can of beans.