Amanda's fabulous bean salad recipe

My version of Amanda's fabulous bean salad

This is one of those recipes that you just eyeball everything depending on how many people you are trying to feed, what you have on hand, and your personal preferences.  There is no single ingredient that will make or break this dish.  If you aren't a fan of one item or another, leave it out.

It is fabulous.  My neighbor Amanda clued me in a couple of years ago, and I've been making it ever since.

1 can dark red kidney beans (drained and rinsed)
1 can chickpeas (drained and rinsed)
1 can whole kernel corn (drained) *can use frozen instead*
1 rib of celery - diced
1 cucumber - diced (remove seeds before dicing)
1/2 small red onion - diced
1 orange bell pepper - diced
Fresh, flat-leaf italian parsley - chopped (to taste)

Toss ingredients in a bowl, douse generously with red wine vinegar.  Sprinkle with a little sugar and salt to taste. Serve.

Makes approximately 6-8 servings. 

Creating weekly meal plans

Since I'm going to be working and traveling fulltime, I'm trying to learn some new strategies for making better, more realistic meal plans for my family.

I love to cook, and I anticipate this becoming a source of frustration for me if I don't get a handle on it right out of the shoot.

I learned today that Meijer grocery stores does something nice on their website to this end. They create weekly meal plans that are built around the sale ad for that week. THANK YOU Meijer!

I'm gonna give it a try. http://www.meijerhealthyliving.com/

I also signed up for Bust-a-Meal. www.BustAMeal.com
On this service, you go to the website and pick your favorite yummy easy recipes from their database of hundreds (maybe thousands by now). All are sorted by main dish and there are side recipes too. You tag your favs, then each week, they send you an email with a menu for the week with whatever number of meals you want (I just picked 3 per week because I know that I won't have time to cook more than that. Then I just fix extra to have as leftovers and we wind up doing a sandwich or going out once or twice for something cheap and fast on a busy day.)

So, the automatic weekly menu email is compiled from the recipes you flagged. They mix it up and follow stuff that's in season. Then, you get the email which contains your menu and a shopping list to take to the store to make sure you have all the ingredients on hand! I'm loving this! Thank you Bust A Meal!

How to Cook Corn on the Cob

I found this website today. Boy do I ever need it! I screw up the corn every time.
I usually don't cook it long enough - nothing like raw corn - yuk!
Other times, I cook it to death - mushy corn - double yuk!

How to Cook Corn..... plus a few other nice tips that most people don't need but I do.
Like, how to make good hamburgers, how to open a coconut, how to cut a pineapple (I do know how to do this...), how to bake a potato (I can do this one too).

Nutritional Anthropologist: Career Path of the Day

So I heard this term on Alton Brown's "Good Eats" today.
He had an expert on his program - someone called a "Nutritional Anthropologist" talking about the history of onions as food.

As usual, the show was full of kitchen science - which is why I love it so much. And the whole concept of someone who studies why we eat what we eat, and why people ate what they ate down through history is massively fascinating to me.

If I'd heard of this field of study when I was 19 or 20, I feel certain I would have pursued it in college - at least have given it a try.

Here's an article from the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition to learn more:
http://www.cellinteractive.com/ucla/center_overview/nut_anthro.html