Toot Tooot!

Beans beans the healthy fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot
The more you toot ,the better you feel
So eat your beans with every meal!


I thought it ironic that I mentioned being forgetful in my last blog and then I forgot to give my Tip Of The Day. So today is devoted solely to a meal idea I came up with for either lunch or dinner. I guess I should make it clear up front especially for those that read my blog and are already very health conscious that I’ve come up with these tips on my own and some of them may not be the absolute best thing for you, but as I said before it’s the little changes that add up. So I’m just doing my best to give you some alternatives to some of the less healthy foods we sometimes find ourselves eating because we just don’t know what else to eat. With this in mind, here’s what I came up with for lunch yesterday…..

I began by sauteing one small chopped onion and one chopped celery stalk in just a little bit of butter. I drained and rinsed a can of Hanover black beans and added those when the celery and onions were tender. Separately in the microwave I prepared a pouch of Uncle Ben’s Ready Whole Grain Medley Brown and Wild Rice. When that was finished, I mixed everything together. I then added lots and lots of seasoning…salt, pepper, garlic powder, season all, and a few other things I can’t quite remember at the moment. To add just a little bit of moisture since it seemed a tad bit dry, I added some chicken broth which gave some additional flavor as well. I measured my ½ cup and added a few grapes to my plate and it was delicious! For a normal person without any restriction on their stomach like I have, the normal serving size is 1 ½ cup. Here is the nutritional breakdown….total calories-340, total fat-3.5g, total carbohydrates-64g, total fiber-9g, total protein-14g. The only downfall that I could find to this meal is the sodium content which was 1120mg. This is something to definitely be careful of, especially if you have high blood pressure or high cholesterol. This can easily be avoided by making a slight adjustment to the recipe. A bag of dried black beans has no sodium at all. So you could soak the beans overnight or use the quick cook method on the back of the bag and then follow all of the same steps to the recipe. This would obviously take longer, but it is the much healthier way of doing it.
One other thing I want to caution you about with this recipe is that beans, as you know cause gas. So be prepared for lots of “music” in your house when you eat this meal! Have fun, enjoy and most of all……HAPPY TOOTING!!!!!