open it, mix with some yummy fresh ingredients and you have a delicious, frugal, quick, easy, healthy, summery meal. You can’t beat that! And it meets my criteria of no preservatives or chemicals. It’s Italian in inspiration (the cuisine I could live on if I had to choose one and one only for the rest of my life). Add fresh bread and you have lunch or dinner. And C and MissN love it!
I use cannellini beans but borlotti beans are good too. You can use any beans you like. Or have. You can even cook your own. I do sometimes, when I am organised.
My basic (flexible) recipe is
Mix together:
chopped garlic
finely sliced red onion
green beans, cut into short pieces and briefly boiled, then refreshed in cold water and drained
1 tin drained cannellini beans
olive oil
white wine vinegar or lemon juice
season with salt and freshly ground black pepper
Spoon onto a bed of green salad leaves
Top with a quartered hard boiled egg, tomatoes and black olives
Italian bean salad
Potatoes make a good replacement for the beans. Add whatever ingredients you have to the bean mixture. Tonight I added finely sliced celery. Capers and anchovies add a Nicoise touch but the salad is quite tasty enough without them.
Regular readers and friends know that I am a bit of a healthy food fanatic. My first criteria though, before healthy food, is delicious food. Life is too short to eat food that doesn’t taste good. And my family is less likely to be keen on it if it doesn’t taste wonderful. God has blessed us with such an abundance of variety that there is no reason not to eat delicious food that is actually good for you too. And we owe it to our bodies to feed them the very best ingredients we can.
So why do we short-change our bodies with processed junk that sabotages our health?
Tags: bean salad, healthy food, salad
October 21, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I have been trying to eat more fresh foods and less processed stuff. Thanks for the tips! I enjoy putting fresh spinach on a lot of things I used to use lettuce for — tacos, sandwiches, etc. I even threw it in some scrambled eggs with ham and cheese the other night, very yummy!
Everyone in my family enjoys eating better.
October 22, 2008 at 12:04 am
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October 22, 2008 at 8:32 am
I would love to hang out at your house for about a month and feast on your food. I’d even give up kid cereals. Well… I’d have to think about that one…
October 22, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Lisa, spinach is awesome stuff. We eat a lot of it. I love rocket (aragula) too.
You would have to bring your own kid cereals, Trey!
October 22, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Wendy
thanks for stopping by my blog – what a delicious treat to stop by yours. How nice to meet in the blogosphere. the renewal we will be doing is going to be in Brisbane, and I know that is far from you. What we request is for participants to get themselves to the site and then once there, the remainder of the costs (accomodation, food, retreat) is free.
I will keep checking by your blog!
Arlene
October 24, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I wish I had some bean dishes that looked as good as that. I had some today…mixed with hot dogs. It was my lame attempt to introduce my northerner wife to “beanie weenies.”
Interesting looking stuff though! I like to do a little experimental cooking in my free time, so I can’t wait to see what else ya got.
November 4, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I love beans. Good thing to know we eat the same brand of beans product. I don’t know, but I make sure that beans is always included in my meal at least once or twice a week or even more. Beans are just healthy, delicious and irresistible. Try red beans, they have a lot of anti-oxidant.