something to make a pot of on sunday and eat all week

I thought I had a picture of the Whole Grains and Beans Soup Mix from Bob's Red Mill, sitting on the shelf at the co-op, but it looks like I have a picture of the 13-bean one instead. Too bad. Anyway, the one we are having today is the beans & grains one. I once had a cookbook all about beans and grains. Back in Marlinton. It went the way of many of my possessions when I transferred myself from Marlinton to Charlottesville to Philadelphia.

The 13-bean soup was fine, but I prefer the Whole Grains and Beans mix because it has about a zillion different grains in it, and the texture is perfect for a stew, which you can flavor a la American cuisine with onions and garlic and herbs (which is how we're having it today), or I would think you could have it curried, with big chunks of potato, which is how I'll have it when I make it myself.

The Whole Grains and Beans Soup Mix contains:

small red beans, pinto beans, lentils, red lentils, whole oat groats, brown rice, triticale berries (wheat), rye berries, hard red wheat, pearled barley, kamut khorasan wheat, buckwheat groats and sesame seeds.

One serving has 19 grams of protein, 15 grams of dietary fiber, 2 grams of fat, and 30% of your recommended daily iron.

I like the words hard red wheat. They make me think of a field in winter that was the setting of a few scenes of a book I read as a kid, which I remember nothing else about. I like the words triticale berries. They remind me of Quest for the Faradawn by Richard Ford. Who doesn't like to say pearled barley? Buckwheat groats is growing on me.

Here comes the summer (squash).

You should have seen how happy I got when I saw the summer squash at the market yesterday. Actually, I saw golden zucchini first and got excited because I thought it was summer squash, and even after noticing it wasn't, I still bought a bunch of it, cause who doesn't love golden zucchini? Then, on down the line a few tables, there was the real summer squash. Got some of that as well. At this point in the summer, I can fry this stuff in thin slices and eat it like candy. I don't get sick of it until at least late July. I found green zucchini at Milk and Honey last week, got a couple of those and threw some slices in with my vegetable roasts, along with shiitake mushrooms. Delicious. Last night, Mark made us a stir-fry, to be detailed below.

Saturday Shopping List

5 summer squash
5 golden zucchini
4 large sweet potatoes
1 lb. chickpeas
5 tomatoes
1 quart strawberries
23-oz jar of home-made apple sauce
1 pint shiitake mushrooms
1 large portobello cap
1 head buttercrisp lettuce
1 head green leaf lettuce
1 bunch curly kale
2 bulbs garlic
1/2 loaf sourdough banana bread
1 loaf multi-grain bread

Total: $36 and change

I'm happy about all the fruit I got. Strawberries are expensive; most people have them for $4 a pint or $7.50 a quart. One of my favorite vendors yesterday had them for $5.50 a quart, so I bought a quart from her. It's an indulgence I just decided I would indulge in. You can only get fresh local strawberries for so long (which doesn't make sense, because it seems like you could grow them in a green house pretty easily - am I wrong? Does anyone know?). Over the winter, I crave fresh berries, think about them, dream about them. When it's summer, I intend to eat as many fresh, Pennsylvania strawberries as I possibly can. Just wait until the blackberries and raspberries come in. And cherries. And blueberries. I'll buy them all.

Now, about this stir-fry that Mark made. It was asparagus, zucchini, squash, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, onion, garlic and red beans. I never think of putting beans in a stir-fry, but it's great. It's a great way to eat beans if you're tired of beans, and it's a great way to make a stir-fry more substantial. It's like you can feel the iron fortifying your body as you eat the red beans. Plus, it's delicious. We had it with multi-grain toast with jelly on the side.

Saturday: The Bean and Spice Lady was back.

Saturday Shopping List

1 lb of red beans
1 lb of yellow split peas
a lot of orange carrots for $1.25/lb
an overpriced pre-mixed bag of salad greens (only greens they had left)
1/2 dozen Empire apples
1 Portobello cap (last one they had)
5 yellow onions
maybe 8 smallish blue potatoes
5 white sweet potatoes
3 Beauregard (red) sweet potatoes
12 oz jar of apple syrup
2 oz. of fennel seeds
1 oz. of celery seed (soup seasoning)
1 oz. of sweet Hungarian paprika
1 giant loaf of cracked-wheat bread
2 sesame-seed bagels

Total: $42.92


So happy the bean-and-spice lady was back! At least for today. It's almost 50 degrees out, so maybe that's why she was there. Split peas. I'mma make a good soup with split peas, sweet potatoes, onion, fennel, and paprika. Would that work? I think I'll try it. Mark's going to make a bean soup, so that's what I got the celery seed for. And the fennel allows me to have my mushroom scramble breakfasts. I got a lot of mushrooms last week, so I still had a Portobello left and some white mushrooms. If I run out, I can get Baby Bellas at Fu-Wah. I was almost out of fennel and getting antsy. I don't know where else to get it.


I've made a habit of having buckwheat pancakes with apple syrup for dinner when I get home from class. After "working" (observing, lesson-planning, teaching) from 8-3 and then having a meeting usually and then class from 4:30-7, I'm starving and pancakes are so quick, easy, and filling. Buckwheat pancakes, anyway, are filling. Especially because I use flaxseed, which gives them extra fat and protein.

Since I'm on the go so much, I've been eating what I call horse food. I bring raw carrots and apples as snacks, along with my travel-cereal-bowl for oat bran. I use water from the water fountain and heat the oat bran in the conference-room microwave. I also add flaxseed to that. I've made a bad habit of going to Subway before class in the evening for a veggie-max sub. I can't afford to be doing that every day, but I haven't been doing it every day, so it's OK, but I need to cut down. I tried bringing the Thai Kitchen instant noodles, but if you can't start with boiling water, or at least hot water, they're kind of high-maintenance. Starting with water from the water fountain, you have to heat them for like 8 minutes in the microwave, before they get soft enough to eat, and then they're too hot to eat, so you have to wait for them to cool, or blow on each bite until you're dizzy, or burn your tongue. All three options make me way too cranky to lesson-plan.


Good soup ingredients this week, though, so I can take my Thermos full of very filling soup (remember, we also have quinoa), and that should take care of my Subway problem. I might start treating myself to wasabi peas. That's something I can bring that will seem like a treat and will be filling. I need to get some nuts, too. They're kind of prohibitively expensive, but worth it if they keep me out of Subway. At least I wouldn't be nickel-and-diming myself.

It's a gorgeous Saturday, which is supposed to be followed by a warm, rainy Sunday, and then a gorgeous Martin Luther King Day. I'm going to spend some more time outside. I might even bring out the bike. I have some lesson plans to work on, a mock-up and rubric for a project I'm assigning my students, and somehow I have to procure 90 pieces of posterboard. I'm a canvasser. This can't be too hard. Lemme get to thinking now.