I’ve been cooking beans.
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Things I learned cooking beans for a year
I know a lot of people cook beans every day for most of their lives. But for me it was new. So, things I learned: a standard 15oz can of beans contains 1.75 cups of beanscanned and cooked-from-dry beans are interchangeable in most recipes1 cup of dried beans becomes 3 cups of cooked beanswhen cooking…
These are a few of our favourite beans
As mentioned in the previous post, I cooked 301 distinct bean recipes during 2021, and my family rated each of them out of five. There were 113 fives — and here they are 🙂 Sorry this format isn’t better — was the best I could do in a short time. When you click on the…
Update: A Year of Beans
So, I didn’t keep up this blog. Oh shocker? 🙂 Work kinda got in the way (we shipped it though! earlier this week! see OpenAlex if you are curious 🙂 ) BUT I did keep gathering bean recipes, and kept cooking beans. I cooked a total 301 bean recipes in 2021. !!! I also kept…
Greek Chickpea soup recipe (Revithia)
(image credit) It is snowing outside, which made it a great day for this soup. It was fantastic. I made it with chickpeas I’d cooked in the pressure cooker — 4 cups cooked, added a bit of the cooking water to a pot with the onion that I’d fried a bit, a bit more water,…
Vegan Meringue (Airy and Perfect!)
(image credit) My 14-year-old daughter made these meringue cookies with our hand mixer, and we can’t stop eating them. She said were really easy to make, and is planning to make them again 🙂
Healing Lemongrass Chickpea Thai Green Curry
(image credit) I really liked this Thai-inspired curry and would want to make it again but my other eaters were a little less enthusiastic — they liked it but they weren’t blown away. We did all think the chickpeas went really well with the other flavors. I’d never cooked with lemongrass before, and this stumped…
Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
(image credit) You have to admit this is a good-looking cookie. Alas I the flavour wasn’t great, I think the peanut butter was distracting. Mixing the melted chocolate into smashed chickpeas worked pretty well though, so maybe I could add some butter instead of the peanut butter? Does feel like it has promise. I am…
Chickpea Salad With Lemon, Parmesan, and Fresh Herbs
(image credit) In contrast to two other fantastic salads this week (one, two), this one was disappointing. Was it because I’d used canned chickpeas instead of dry ones that I’d lovingly cooked in my pressure cooker? (4 cups water + 1.5 tsp salt for every cup of chickpeas, 61 minutes on high then natural release)…
Pasta e Ceci (Italian Chickpea Soup)
(image credit) John made a Pasta e Ceci that was more of a soup and included greens and basil. It was good, but didn’t have the magic of the version we’d made a week ago.
Orange Spice Garbanzo Cake
(image credit the author, CC0) Made this spice cake. It was fantastic. There was a package of edible flowers for sale in my grocery store so I bought them for decoration and it was lovely. The cake was a little too flat, partly because I used a 8×11 pan instead of the recommended 8×8. I…
Chickpea Salad (lemon, cucumber, tomato, feta, avocado)
(image credit) Today’s chickpea salad was also delicious, maybe even better than yesterday’s. Cucumber instead of lettuce, lemon instead of balsamic vinegar, otherwise much the same. Will definitely make this again.
Balsamic Chickpea, Avocado, + Feta Salad
(image credit) This chickpea salad was delicious, and really easy to make. Will make again.
Chickpea Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
(image credit the author CC0) Growing up my mum often made cookies — we used to laugh they were so packed full of healthy things they hardly held together. I was hungry for those again, so I modified this recipe to include rolled oats, subbed the chocolate chips for raisins (sacrilege I know), added some…
Instant Pot Kala Chana
(image credit) Did you know there are black chickpeas? They feature in some Indian (Kala Chana) and Italian (Cece Nero) dishes. I bought some from an Indian grocery store and used them for this recipe. I forgot to soak them, but usually you can fix that by just increasing the pressure cooker length a bit.…
Beer-Honey Roasted Chickpeas
(image credit) These turned out beautiful, just like the picture — dark, rich, shiny. They tasted good too. A little labour intensive. You roast the chickpeas once, stir them around in some spices and then distilled honey+beer, then roast them for a little while again. Not too bad, but not quick or carefree. otoh the…
Chickpea-Beer Battered Brussels Sprouts
(image credit the author C0, entitled Brussel Sprout Puddles) These were one of the more spectacular failures of our bean experiment thus far. I wish I’d taken a picture of them right out of the oven, but I was too busy laughing to remember till after I’d mostly cleaned them up (the photo is a…
Chickpea Flour Beer Bread
(image credit) This sounds like it might be good but alas it isn’t. Chickpea flour is very fine and it has resulted in a very fine crumb, a dry bread, and it doesn’t have a good flavour… kind of bland, kind of bitter, but not in a good beer way. I don’t think it could…
Chickpea Flour Pancakes Recipe
(image credit) My husband made some chickpea flour pancakes this morning for breakfast. It’s a family project! 🙂 He’s not a huge fan of banana so the amount of banana in this recipe was a little too much, but the chickpea flour worked great, was tasty. It won’t be replacing our staple high-fibre pancake recipe…
Chickpea Curry (Chhole)
(image credit) I liked this one more than the rest of my family did, but yeah, I liked it quite a lot. Am a sucker for tomatoes, so I guess it had my number. I also appreciated that I didn’t need to chop the onions very small because they just go in the blender. One…
Vegan Buffalo Chickpea Quesadillas
(image credit) I love hot-sauce-flavoured things, so this recipe caught my eye. Although it wasn’t the main reason we started eating more beans, I am glad that eating more beans means we tend to eat less meat. (To be fair, I think I’ve never eaten as much bacon as I did during Black Eyed Pea…
Chickpea Omelette – Vegan Omelette
(image credit) My teenaged daughter doesn’t like eggs so she has never eaten an omelette. Served her one of these only-chickpea-no-eggs-anywhere-I-promise versions and she liked it! Nice opening up of our breakfast game. Made it by mixing in a bit of broccoli I’d chopped up and then microwaved to soften and some cheddar cheese I…
Chickpea Peanut Butter Blondies
(image credit) This picture is tough to live up to, but these blondies almost do. They have no flour, just chickpeas, peanut butter, honey, and a bit of levener. They came out soft and gooey, and stayed that way when they cooled. They sank a bit and kinda lack structural integrity, but they were tasty…
Smashed Chickpea Salad Sandwich
(image credit) This sandwich spread is amazing. Not very mayo-y (important for others in my family), a nice vinegar zing, and pickles. Super good, and easy to put together. Calls for fresh dill which I don’t normally have on hand, but maybe would be ok with dried dill too so it could be a pantry…
20 minute Basil Chickpea Curry
(image credit) We are big fans of basil. This curry included both dried basil and fresh basil, and a bit of lime. Was good. Not knock-your-socks-off, but tasty, and easy.
The Best Chocolate Cake Recipe {Ever} and Aquafaba Swiss Buttercream and Raspberry filling
(image credit) Chocolate cake, vanilla buttercream icing, raspberry jam filling. It was our 20th wedding anniversary this week. My husband John and I loved our wedding cake, oh so long ago. In fact, for the first few years after we got married, on our anniversary I bought a mini cake from the baker with the…
Quick Pasta and Chickpeas / Pasta e Ceci
(image credit) Is the magic of this recipe the olive oil? The rosemary? I’m not sure, but magic it has. Warm and satisfying and also delicious as leftovers. I used the shells in a box of Amy’s Mac and Cheese, worked great. I used dried rosemary instead of fresh. Delish, will make again.
5-Minute Spicy Chickpea Salad
(image credit) This chickpea sandwich spread was good, but not great. (Sneak preview: this one was great).
The Best Healthy Crunchy Chickpea Cookies (Gluten-Free)
(image credit) I’m not sure if the title of this recipe is accurate, but I plan on making a bunch of chickpea cookies this month to test it out 🙂 These were a strong start! Very coconut-y. Quite crispy. Overall a strong entry. That said, not the end-all-be-all of cookies, so looking forward to future…
Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie
(image credit) We started off Chickpea Month with a use of chickpeas that many might not know about. That liquid inside a can of chickpeas? It is called aquafaba and can be used as an egg replacement. It was my brother’s birthday and he is more of a pie guy than a cake guy, so…
February: Chickpeas!
(image credit) My daughter and I aren’t the biggest fans of chickpeas, at least not relative to other beans. Because of this, when lightly contemplating the idea of Focusing On A Single Bean For A Whole Month, it felt smart to assign chickpeas to the shortest month, February. I’d forgotten how versatile chickpeas are though.…
Black-eyed Pea recipe round-up
Believe it or not my family didn’t get tired of eating black eyed peas. I’d found really diverse recipes, I think that helped. Also they were just plain tasty! (And my family is good sports 🙂 ) We ate black eyed-peas all January. 31 days, 35 recipes. Ok 32 days because I started on Dec…
Jamaican Black-eyed Pea Curry
(image credit) I almost forgot! This one was a surprise hit! A lot like the other curries we’d had this month, but the lime + coconut milk gave it a different thing going on, very good, and made great leftovers. I made the Jamaican curry powder from scratch using the recipe on the webpage. I…
Black Eyed Pea Pecan Pie
(image credit the author, CC0) Yup, this black-eyed pie recipe knows what it is doing. The pecans on top get a little sugar caramelization going on, the pie filling has a good solid texture, and whipping cream on top is perfect. We made it with this coconut pie crust which was a nice complement (used…
Lobia tikki
(image credit) Made some black-eyed pea fritters that were a lot like Akara, but Indian instead of West African. They are made of already-cooked chickpeas, so had a bit of a smoother, less-fresh taste. Great flavour though, especially with the chutney. I forgot to add the chickpea flour initially (I think it is mentioned in…
Black Eyed Peas: Vietnamese Sweet Rice & Bean Pudding – Che Dau Trang
(image credit) My family is a big fan of sticky rice pudding at Thai restaurants (often with coconut cream on top, and/or served beside some ripe mango), so when I saw this recipe for sticky rice with black eyed peas I knew we had to try it. My grocery store didn’t stock glutenous or sticky…
Southern Skillet Black-Eyed Peas with Quick Buttery Biscuits
(image credit) This stew is very sweet, so that meant that some of my eaters loved it and others didn’t. I thought it had a nice flavour but I’d start by cutting the sugar and then add it in until it is a sweetness you like. I’d never cooked with collard greens before (in fact…
Cheesy, Creamy Black-Eyed Peas
(image credit) Bacon and cream. Pretty much guaranteed success from the get-go, this casserole. I didn’t have any jack cheese on hand, so just upped the cream cheese to use the whole package and skipped the cheese on top. Fantastic.
Marinated Black-Eyed Pea Salad
(image credit) Haven’t eaten many vinegary bean salads yet, but made this one and found it very tasty. Chopped the pepper and onion very small, and skipped the parsley because I’m not much of a fan. Delicious. Am amused how often bacon is a component of recipes including black-eyed peas, including this salad 🙂 Looking…
Roasted Black-Eyed Peas
(image credit) You’ve probably heard of roasted chickpeas, but these give them a run for their money. I’ve made them twice in the last week. Made one batch with some leftover honey BBQ rub seasoning. They were great. Made another with garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Also great. Made a third with smoked paprika, salt,…
Black-Eyed Pea Masala
(image credit) I’ve been cooking, but feel behind a bit in posting. Catching up now. Made this curry. John and Kira thought it wasn’t very flavourful, just kinda ok, but I found it very tasty and comforting I think because of the bit of creamy added from the yogurt. So a bit of a mixed…
Lobia Biryani – Black Eyed Bean Carrot Biryani
(image credit) Tried making a biryani. This one didn’t taste that good — too strongly flavoured. Worth a shot but I won’t be making it again.
Guyanese Cookup Rice
(image credit) This was good. We made it with a combo of chicken drumsticks and chicken breasts. I like the crunch of slightly-cooked cabbage, and the coconut added a nice flavor. Solid 4/5, only suffering because we’ve had a few things we’ve liked better recently.
Minced Beef with Black-Eyed Beans
(image credit) Yum, another winner right here. I chopped the onions and tomato very fine, and it all kind of melded together into a very satisfying flavor combination. More comfort food. Recommended.
Tex Mex Black Eyed Pea Casserole
(image credit) This casserole turned out to have my comfort food number. Flavourful but not too spicy, lots of cheese but not overwhelming, and carb rice deliciousness. Plus bacon (I added 8 slices rather than the 5 called for). Cooked the beans for a long time in the pressure cooker so they were nice and…
Black Eyed Peas in Onion Curry
(image credit) In contrast to the previous yummy curry, this one tasted watery and raw and not good at all. Nobody in my family liked it. I liked the sound of the recipe, and the story behind it, but yeah nope.
Black eyed peas curry recipe (Gujarati chawli curry) Lobia
(image credit) I liked this curry a lot. It was easy to make, and different — just a smooth sauce. I’d cooked the black eyed peas a long time in the pressure cooker so they were very soft, and the curry overall was a nice soft comforting texture as well as tasty.
Sweet Black Eyed Peas Sundal (Kaaramani Vella Sundal)
(image credit) Made some black eyed pea dishes over the last few days, so time to catch up! This dish was different — a salty and sweet snack, with coconut. Fun to try, though I didn’t find myself reaching for the leftovers. Did try it on vanilla ice cream — not quite as good as…
Black-Eyed Pea Pie
(image credit) Ok this is delicious. Really, really good. Basically a spinach pie but with sausage, and some beans. Yum. We have a mushroom-disliker in the family, so we skipped the mushroom layer. I used hot Italian sausage instead of chorizo. I used all baby spinach and didn’t remove any stems. It took a few…
Vanilla Black Eyed Pea Blender Muffins
(image credit to author, CC0) So I tried to morph this (very good! and low cal and fiberous!) recipe for chocolate black bean muffins to be kind of a muffin version of this bean cookie, by removing the chocolate, but the end result did not taste good. Too bean-y and too bland. Yes, indeed, perhaps…
Creamy Black Eyed Peas
(image credit) I had great hopes for this one but ended up not liking it at all. I used smoked turkey from the supermarket deli area. Didn’t have cajun spice so added onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne instead. I loved that I could throw it all in the pressure cooker together. I really liked…
Curried Vegetarian Black-Eyed Peas
(image credit) This curry recipe claims to be lightly spiced and yup it was, too lightly spiced for us in fact. It wasn’t very good. Continuing to explore other curry recipes to find more favourites.
Black Eyed Peas with Cornbread Dumplings
(image credit) My family loved this. They love most recipes that include sausage, to be fair, but they loved this extra on top. I followed the recipe closely, other than I was heavy handed with chicken bouillon. The result was almost too salty (I also added salt) so will fix that next time. I boiled…
Pasta With Blackeye Salsa
(image credit) This one was different and very good — light and fresh. Basically just elbow pasta or shells with a light fresh sauce made of tomatoes. I used the pasta in a mac and cheese container, lemon juice because I didn’t have lime juice, and regular tomatoes because I didn’t have cherry tomatoes. Was…
No Rules Black-eye Peas Cookies
(image credit the author, CC0) I love cookies. It is a cookie kind of week. I made black-eyed pea cookies, lightly inspired by this recipe. I was feeling lazy and rebellious so I took a bunch of shortcuts. I think they are fantastic. Not too sweet, crunchy on the bottom, buttery, delicious. YMMV: I have…
Black-Eyed Peas with Coconut Milk and Ethiopian Spices
(image credit) Our previous recipe took a well-trod path to my family’s heart: tomatoes and sausage. This recipe, however, took more risks. My husband John had to track down Ethiopian berbere seasoning at the local specialty food store. Totally worth it though, it was amazing. I used a full can of coconut milk and cut…
Black-Eyed Pea Soup
(image credit) Pretty boring recipe title, but yum so tasty. This has been one of our favourites thus far. I used two big cans of diced tomatoes, undrained, and a small can of green chilis, undrained. I rounded up on all the dry seasonings and the Worcestershire sauce. Otherwise made it just as is. Easy…
Black Eyed Peas with Fresh Dill, Olive Oil and Orange Slices
(image credit) I read about this traditional recipe from Crete. Very different flavour profile than I normally cook, so I thought would be a fun experiment. The recipe author published a slightly modified version for the Instant Pot, so I followed that recipe (I have a multi-cooker electric pressure cooker. It came out before Instant…
Black Eyed Peas and Greens Stuffed Buns
(image credit) Ok this recipe is fantastic. The buns looked just like the gorgeous picture, and were super tasty. I served them with the chili honey sauce linked to in the recipe and the combo was one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time. Ok, at least since the black-eyed pea fritters…
Lucky Black-Eyed Peas Chocolate Chip Blondies
(image credit) We had this black-eyed pea dessert for dinner one night, because it was that kind of week. My daughter made them, she said they were really easy to pull together. The batter tastes a lot like beans, but the final product doesn’t! They are good. I’m not the biggest fan of the almond…
Chicken Chili With Black Eyed Peas
(image credit) Well 2021 has gotten off to a bit of a rocky start — paused posting about beans to focus on the attempted coup of the USA. That seems to have calmed down for the moment, so back to beans. Made a chicken chili with black eyed peas a few days ago. My 14…
Black-Eyed Peas with Mustard, Cumin and Curry Leaves
(image credit) Made another curry tonight, from this recipe. Was a little boring — probably the least tasty thing I’ve made so far. My first time cooking with mustard seeds. Was indeed cool to see how small they were, and heating them until they popped was pretty fun 🙂
Lobia Chaat / Black Eyed Peas Chaat
(image by the author, CC0) Been eating lots of heavy recipes lately and not many vegetables, so made a lighter lunch. As per Wikpedia: Chaat or chat is a savoury snack that originated in India, typically served as an hors d’oeuvre at roadside tracks from stalls or food carts across the Indian subcontinent in India,…
Texas Bean Bake With Ground Beef
(image credit) My family loves sweet smoky BBQ, so they are really enjoying this Texas Bean Bake With Ground Beef. Used black-eyed peas (cooked in slow cooker) and a can of pinto beans and a can of “baked beans” (I forgot to look what kind they were). I’ll be making it again!
Akara (Nigerian black-eyed pea Fritters)
(image credit) Yesterday I made some West African black-eyed pea fritters. Used this recipe for Akara (aka Accara) with Kanni (this recipe) on the side. Very tasty, rave reviews from everyone. Was a bit challenging to make. I used too much water in the batter, I cut the onions too big, and my oil was…
Lucky New Years Creative Cake
(images by author, CC0) Ok I said I wasn’t going to make up any recipes but, well, lo and behold I did. I was planning to make Pretty Black Eyed Pea Cake today on New Years Day but I made so may subs along the way it turned into its own recipe. The making of…
Dave’s Georgia Black Eyed Peas
(image credit) The traditional Southern prep for black-eyed peas is with ham, corn bread, and collard greens. Collard greens are pretty hard to find in Vancouver so skipped those (could have substituted with kale I guess but substituted with eating more chocolate instead). I picked this black-eyed peas recipe because not only do I want…
Spiced Black-Eyed Peas with Curry Leaves
(image credit) And it has begun! What a great start.I made a black-eyed pea curry for lunch today, on Dec 31 2020. Seemed reasonable to cheat ahead on 2021 and get the lucky foods cooking ASAP! Spoiler: delicious. Recipe: Spiced Black-Eyed Peas with Curry Leaves at saveur.com. Prep I made it as listed, with a…
January: Black-Eyed Peas
Black-eyed peas are traditionally eaten on New Years Day for good luck. The start of 2021 needs all the help it can get: I’m going to eat them all month. Here we go!
About
This is a blog about beans. I’m Heather. I started eating a much more high-fiber diet a few months ago (fall of 2020), and have found myself obsessed with beans since then. When one is obsessed the natural next step is to start a blog, so here we are! I’d never enjoyed cooking very much,…
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