Tag Archives: pulse

Buffalo, Food, health, pulses, whole grain

Ceci ‘wing’ bowl

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This is a relatively fast, moderately healthy, and delicious meal that has a ton of fiber and taste.

If you are craving Wings, this may help hit the spot.

This quantity will serve about 4 people.

4 cups prepared bulgur*

1/2 tsp garlic powder

Toss these together.

2 carrots, cleaned and diced

3 scallions, diced

2 large celery stalks, diced

Mix all of these together in a bowl and remove about 1/3 of a cup for an end garnish.

Cook the rest in about 2 1/2T of butter, with salt and pepper for about 3 minutes. You want these lightly cooked, not soggy.

Toss the cooked veg with the bulgur and portion into 4 bowls

3T butter

2 cups (a bit more than 1 can) ceci/chickpeas/garbanzos/chana
1/4 tsp salt


In the same pan you did the veg in, melt the butter and add the ceci. Stir it up.

3 Tablespoons Frank’s (or other good hot sauce you like to taste)
1T white vinegar

Add to the ceci

Top the bulgur with the ceci. Then add the reserved veg.

3T blue cheese crumbles

Add to the bowls. Serve with blue cheese dressing.

* bulgur is amazing. Think of it as a whole grain minute rice- it’s cracked and steamed wheat that you basically just have to either pour water over in the morning and let it soak while you go about your day, or bring it to a boil and let it sit for about 15 minutes while you get the rest of your meal on. And it’s delicious- creamy and nutty and a whole grain that is just perfect for getting your fiber up!

Food, pulses

Are pulses toxic?

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Well, if you are looking for a reason to avoid pulses, I am sure this will do. Beans are certainly, surprisingly, toxic. They are also surprisingly easy to make safe.

First, it’s mostly kidney and Lima beans that are toxic. Second, the toxins will make you moderately ill, at worst, unless you are eating your weight in beans. Third, it is laughably easy to make these beans safe.

Lima beans (also called butter beans when fresh) have linamarin in them, a compound that could potentially make you ill because of it’s similarity to cyanide. This toxin is broken up by cooking the beans, so the rule is to never eat raw Lima beans.

A different toxin, phytohaemagglutinin, a lectin, is also present in many beans. Red kidney beans are the worst culprit, however, and care should be given when making them. Again, cooking them will destroy the toxin. A hard boil for 10 minutes is enough to make the beans safe, but the FDA says 30 minutes just to be sure. The problem comes in slow cookers, which may not heat the beans high enough with low cooking temps. Pressure cookers, the range, and some slow cookers will be fine.

Again, these toxins are not fatal, and are easy to get rid of. And even if you do get sick, odds are it will last only a few hours. However, if you want to follow a ‘raw’ diet, pulses may not be your food of choice.

In addition, a small percentage of the population will potentially die from fava (broad) beans. These will only hurt you if you have a medical illness, but it is yet another way this incredibly healthy food can kill us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gvnQfbrIA

So, if you really want to be a bummer at events and avoid eating beans at all costs, there you go. For the rest of us, let’s forge on!

(Lima beans are capitalized because they are named after Lima, Peru, where they have been cultivated for 6000+ years)

Food, health, pulses

WHO is saying to eat pulses?

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I’m so sorry. I will try to avoid that in the future. But yes, the WHO, the US and Canada are all pushing to eat more pulses. The UN actually made 2016 the ‘Year of the Pulse’ to try and get more people to eat them.

Yes, another post about how important it is to get more pulses into your diet. Because it simply can’t be emphasized enough that pulses are cheap, so affordable to everyone around the world, not just to trim a food budget; highly nutritious, so they can reduce malnutrition in poverty stricken countries, and add nutrition to the food rich but nutrition poor diets of many western countries; healthy, for digestive systems, hearts, blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, and many other lifestyle issues; good for the environment, because pulses add to the biodiversity of the soil they are grown in, contributing to healthier soil a healthier environment, and reducing the need for fertilizer; and good for the environment because they mitigate climate change and put less waste into our environment.

There are simply no reasons to not add pulses to your diet, or replace some proteins in your diet with them and many many reasons to do it. Of course, this is assuming you do not have one of the rare problems where you simply cannot digest pulses.

So you are sold, and you want to add more pulses to your diet? You are in luck, because one thing I have is a wide range of pulse meals to share.