Category: Beans

Beauty Bean Salad and a Herb S(w)izzle

Hello Yogis and retro food lovers. Today we are revisiting “Eat Your Way To Love and Beauty”  by Swami Saravati.  Today we are focussing on the beauty side with a Beauty Bean Salad.  There is no indication as to what the Herb S(w)izzle is good for.  Let’s say hydration and move on.  As with last time, before we get to the recipes, let’s take a moment to marvel at the cover of this book.  

 

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This is probably one of my all favourite covers of any book I own.  The swami looks young and gorgeous, she has perfect skin, is lithe and limber and is rocking an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow flowered bikini.  Seeing that cover and how great she looks, who wouldn’t want to get her recipes?  I will add that nowadays doing the camel pose over over glass containers probably breaks all sorts of OHS laws but back in the freewheeling days of 1971…you could do what you wanted!  Just on that, and how good she looks?  There was no photoshop back in 1971.  She actually looked like that!  

Hmm…maybe I need to cook a few more recipes from this book

Beauty Bean Salad

Beauty Bean Salad

This was really tasty!  And it also looked very pretty with the different shades of green and then pops of purple from the red onion.  I ate this for dinner one night and made enough to have for lunch the following day.  One of the great things about this salad is that the ingredients are all fairly robust so will not wilt overnight.  Good thing really because after I had taken the photos from the night, I realised I had left out a key ingredient.  

I used green beans, edamame and sugar snap beans for my fresh ingredients.  However, the recipe also calls for some dried beans.  I had a can of chickpeas in the cupboard so when I had these for lunch, I threw in some chickpeas.

Beauty Bean Salad3

 

The chickpeas changed this from a side salad to a more filling meal. I’m not sure if the Swami would entirely agree with this but if you wanted to bulk this out even more, some feta or goat’s cheese or a can of tuna or some grilled salmon would be great with this!

Beauty Bean Salad – The Recipe

Beauty Bean Salad

I used lemon juice and olive oil as my dressing and dill as my herb.

Beauty Bean Salad4

I find it really interesting to see the differences between night light and daylight and the passage of time on the color of this salad.


Beauty Bean Salad5

The Herb S(w)izzle

This drink is actually called a Herb Sizzle.  There is nothing sizzled in it so in my head it is the Herb Swizzle as you have to stir the ingredients together!  Whatever you call it, it is a fancy and very tasty apple juice!  I used Rosemary as my herb but you could use your favourite herb instead.  

Herb Swizzle 2 (1)

The Herb S(w)izzle Recipe


Herb Sizzle Recipe

 

Herb Swizzle 3

This was really refreshing and went very nicely with the salad!

It was really fun revisiting Eat Your Way To Love and Beauty.  I also still want to go to the Swami’s Yoga Retreat!  Sadly Swami herself passed away in 2009.  I have a candleholder very much like the one by her left knee on the book cover.  So let’s light a candle and raise a Herb Swizzle toast to the Swami and her legacy of eating our way to love and beauty!

CandleHave a great week!

Retro Food For Modern Times: Singers and Swingers – Roberta Ashley (1967) – Sorry About That, Chief!

Last week  I mentioned that there was surprisingly little to mock in Roberta Ashley’s Singers and Swingers.  Never fear though, little doesn’t mean nothing and today, I’m turning my unflinching gaze to a few of the less palatable gems contained therein.

I have a strange relationship with cold soup.  Until 5 years ago, I can honestly say, had never eaten it, and had no intention of doing so. I started to come round after a trip to Barcelona in 2008 and a bowl of the most amazing gazpacho I have ever eaten.  I have become a fan of this delicious Spanish concoction, to the point of whipping up a batch or two of my own...

Homemade Gazpacho...I can do cold Soup
Homemade Gazpacho…I can do cold soup

So, whilst reconciled to gazpacho, cold creamy soups and I aren’t even friends on Facebook.  You know how sometimes, if you eat something creamy you get a film in your mouth from the fat in the cream? That’s the thought that puts me off.   Well, it’s that thought that puts me off  a cold soup made from the freshest cream and vegetables.  I have seen what cold canned soup looks like and believe me, it’s not going anywhere near my mouth!  Gross!  So, this recipe from Leonard Nimoy is designed to push all the wrong buttons for me.  As far as I’m concerned this one can go back to Vulcan, Spock!

Leonard Nimoy's Cold Soup..not for me!
Leonard Nimoy’s Cold Soup..is not for me!

The next recipe designed to have me gritting my teeth and muttering swear words under my breath is called Homemade Canned Beans. As mentioned in the last post, I am not averse to a can of beans.  Beans on toast is one of my go to meals when I want something quick and healthy after a trip to the gym or a lazy breakfast.  My issue with most of the popular brands of beans on the market is that the sauce can be overly sweet.  So I was very excited to read the name of this recipe.  Imagine if I could make my own beans that tasted like canned beans but with less sugar?  Happy days….

Unfortunately, as I read on, it turned out that the universe had another fate in store for me

 

Homemade Canned Beans?
Homemade Canned Beans?

Remember in the wacky races when Muttley used to mutter under his breath?  I did a lot of that whilst reading this recipe.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/gf_IH3rj0hY]

If you want a better recipe for beans, check out Erica over at Retro Recipe Attempts.  If, like me, you have an aversion to an overly sweet sauce for your beans, I think the mustard and tabasco in Erica’s recipe would cut through that  sweetness.

http://retrorecipe.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/zingy-baked-beans/

Next, on my hit list,  we have Southern Fried Chicken À La Mrs Bobby Goldsboro. Personally, I would call this heart attack on a plate but Mr Bobby Goldsboro informs us that:

“I like it because I like Southern Cooking, but another reason is that fried foods are fattening and I am always trying to put on some weight”. 

Mr Bobby Goldsboro needs a good hard slap if you ask me. The man must have had the metabolism of a hummingbird!* Just looking at a plate of something that contains bacon fat, oil and cream and is served with mashed potatoes or biscuits, butter and honey would be enough to derail my weight loss efforts for a year!

Southern Fried Chicken A La Mrs Bobby Goldsboro
Southern Fried Chicken A La Mrs Bobby Goldsboro

As a child, one of my favourite tv shows was Get Smart.  I  would race home from school every day to see which episode was on, I swear I have seen every episode a dozen or more times and, if push came to shove, I could probably recite some of them almost verbatim.   

The hero of the show was the bumbling, wise-cracking secret agent called Maxwell Smart, played by Don Adams.   Given my love for the show, I was delighted to see that Singers and Swingers contained recipes by both Don Adams and Barbara Feldon who played Max’s colleague (and eventually his wife), Agent 99.  More about Barbara Feldon next time but I desperately wanted their recipes to be good.  Hers is great.  However, in the words of Maxwell Smart, I believe this recipe “missed by that much”.  If by “that much” you mean the distance from here to the moon.  I can’t even think what this mix would begin to taste like…if anyone is brave enough to make it, please let me know!

don adams peanut butter cheese spread 001

I’ll leave you to  ponder the utter weirdness of the Don Adams recipe.  I’m off to search for episodes of Get Smart….

Enjoy your week!

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*Hummingbirds have an incredibly fast metabolism. At any given moment they are only hours away from starving to death.