EATING HEALTHY

A member of my family was recently diagnosed with "pre-diabetes" and told to lose weight and eat healthy. That got me thinking about how we eat, which isn't healthy enough.

For the past year, I've been trying to make changes. First up, I've pitched several of our non-stick pans. I'll be looking to replace them with Revereware or Farberware. (I've already replaced the pots--now to get another skillet or two.)

But what about food?

We eat far too much processed food. I've been switching over to lower fat and lower sodium soups, etc., and when I went to look for a can of black beans yesterday morning, I realized I'd used the last one up. It was time to break out the bag of real, dried beans.
According to the Idaho Bean Commission:

• Each half-cup serving of dry beans provides six to seven grams of protein, meets at least 10% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein, yet costs about 20 cents per serving.


• A single half-cup serving of cooked dry beans counts as one, one-ounce serving of lean meat in the USDA Food Pyramid Meat and Beans group, and as a full serving of vegetables in the Vegetables group. (And there are LOTS of other fascinating facts up there, too.)

I've never cooked dried beans before. Who has time to watch a pot on the stove? Instead, I rinsed and picked through the beans, like the package said, and tossed them into a girl's best friend: my crockpot.

Once the beans were cooked (on high for about three hours), I figured I was ready to go. Now to make them palatable--and that means curry paste. Okay, that's processed, too, but there's no added sodium, and I know exactly what's in today's lunch.

We need to eat more real fruits and vegetables. That would be easy for me -- not so easy for my husband. But he's agreed to try.

It's a start.

P.S. Anybody got a good black bean recipe?