This week I tried dark red kidney beans first. They were canned, but they didn't take nearly as long, it was more heating up once they were washed. The beans were swimming in this gooey juice, which was mainly preservatives. I read somewhere it is best to make the dry beans, to avoid this preservative goo. I decided to go traditional southern on Friday and make black-eyed peas with smoked sausage. This is the recipe I used:
Smoked Sausage and Black-Eyed Peas
(Adapted from Emeril Lagasse’s recipe)
12 – 16 ounces smoked sausage
1 cup chopped yellow onion
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne
4 whole cloves garlic
5 sprigs of fresh thyme
4 bay leaves
3 teaspoons finely chopped Italian parsley
8 cups chicken stock
1 pound dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon minced garlic
Minced green onions, to garnish (optional)
1. Slice the sausage and cook it in a large pot over medium heat to render some of the fat. (Mine didn’t yield much.)
2. Add the onions, salt, cayenne, whole garlic cloves, bay leaves, thyme, and parsley to the pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, until the onion begins to soften.
3. Add the chicken stock, black-eyed peas, and minced garlic.
4. Bring to a boil, and simmer, covered for about 1 ½ hours, until the peas are tender. Serve garnished with green onions, if desired.
This recipe was so simple, however I managed to make it way more difficult. You see I was putting off making dinner. Finally, I decided I was going to make the recipe above, using dry peas I bought at New Leaf Market. The recipe said the peas were to boil for an hour and half. Since I bought the peas in bulk, they didn't come with directions if they needed to be soaked or not. I had a genius idea to not soak them first, but to put them on the stove on high heat. Things were going really well at first, I was checking on them regularly and adding water as needed. Then my friend called that I haven't talked to in a while. I am on my balcony when I hear this loud beeping noise. I was just thinking to myself, look somebody is somewhere burning something. When I walked back into the the kitchen, there was smoke everywhere.
The smoke alarm was going off. The smell of burnt beans permeated through the house. Surprisingly, once I removed the burnt beans on the bottom and cleaned the pot, the peas turned out really good.
What I had not planned for was the aftermath. Beans and peas have a lot of fiber, kidney beans and black-eyed peas especially. It was not 30 minutes after I had finished dinner, my stomach started to do flip flops. I ended up with the "bubble guts", and didn't even see it coming. My stomach was not used to all the fiber.
I have a lot of other beans or peas I want to try. I never realized how many lentils there were, green, orange, red, the list really goes on. I got two big bags of whole black lentils on clearance. Looking forward to the new recipes using black lentils.
Numbers are can play a big part of weight loss. For me it can be a source of contention and anxiety. Many people are so fixated on the number that they become obsessive. I tend to be upset because I feel there should have been more of a change in the number for the amount of work I have done. I hate having to factor in muscle gain. What I am trying to say is I tend to stay away from the scale, because I can get fixated on the numbers. I thought it would be healthy to look for other ways to show growth and success with maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I found this, Non scale Victories:
I have been really distracted lately, fantasizing about scenarios of this guy. I asked God to just make it clear to me if I should try and pursue getting to know him better or not. It finally clicked in my head today, to move on, this fantasizing was just in my head. Letting go is not easy, but if am to get anywhere, I need to focus.
Time to hustle and grind. . . .
Come back by Danny Gokey
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