Intuitive cooking.
I started thinking about this concept the weekend I went to Philadelphia to attend Christina Pirello’s 3-Day Intensive Study Program. I received an information packet a few weeks in advance of the class and it stated we would receive no recipes during the class. What?! No recipes? That’s one of the reasons I take cooking classes! Yep, no recipes, because the purpose of the 3-day cooking intensive was not to show us how to follow recipes. It was to learn to cook intuitively–to cook with seasonal foods, to use a variety of cooking (and raw) methods, to trust our gut.
Since taking Christina’s class last month I have enjoyed cooking and food prep more than ever. I’m buying local, seasonal produce at the farmer’s market. I’m walking out onto my deck and snipping lettuce, tomatoes, kale and herbs from my garden. I’m prepping food in a way that makes sense for summer meals.
Last Sunday, as I was preparing food for vacation, I couldn’t decide what type of bean dish to bring along. In the cooking intensive we were encouraged to use more than one grain in a porridge–a great way to get a variety of textures and nutrients–so I decided I would mix a few beans. I looked in the cupboard–at a ridiculous collection of mason jars filled with dry beans–and pulled out three that just sounded perfect to me: azuki (adzuki), kidney and pinto beans, and I soaked them in kombu. Maybe it was because their reddish and pinkish hues matched? Perhaps because I thought that though, individually, the cooking times in the pressure cooker would vary, I trusted that I could determine the pressure cooking time for the trio? I followed my gut.
Two days later, while lazing my day away, laying in the sun along Lake Waramaug, I started reading Christina Pirello‘s book Glow: A prescription for radiant health and beauty. In the section on the five flavors of food she writes that salty foods (targeting kidney, bladder and reproductive system) can aid the body in softening the hardness of muscles, glands and other tissue. Suddenly I understood why I crave salty foods after intense workouts. (Like, oh, a marathon?! Or, these days, any workout over 45 minutes.) She went on to list a few of these salty foods which included, wait for it, azuki (adzuki), kidney and pinto beans and sea vegetables (kombu).
Hey, maybe I’m getting the hang of this intuitive thing?
JL’s Intuitive Three-Bean Delight (PRINTABLE RECIPE)
Makes approximately 4 cups of cooked beans
Ingredients
- 2 cups of mixed beans: pinto, red kidney and azuki (soaked for 1 hour, rinsed and drained)
- Kombu, one inch strip
- 2T avocado oil
- 1/2 cup vidalia onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 bay leaves
- Filtered water
- Iodized sea salt, to taste
Instructions
- Heat the avocado oil in the uncovered pressure cooker.
- Add onion and garlic and saute for a few minutes.
- Add beans, bay leave and water (enough to cover the beans, and then a bit more).
- Cover the pressure cooker and bring to pressure and cook at pressure for 23 minutes.
- Use the quick release method and the open the pressure cooker lid, away from you.
- If the beans need to be cooked a bit more, simmer until they reach your sense of “done.”
- Add salt to taste.
Frankly, these beans are perfect on their own. But, on vacation, we found a couple of terrific uses.
Nachos!
Macro breakfast!
I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Glow. This book is about how eating whole foods can impact your own internal and external glow. It’s about how what you eat impacts how your feel. I continue to learn from Christina!
12 thoughts on “Intuitive Three-Bean Delight (recipe)”
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Thanks for passing on what you’ve been learning from your readings. I just got back from a 17hr hiking trip, and proceeded to eat a whole bag of roasted laver seaweed. I always thought the salt craving was related to dehydration, but the muscle softening thing makes sense.
Pressure cooker should be here any day now!
I can’t wait to hear about what you make first in your pressure cooker! Be sure to let me know!
Very interesting on salty foods and would explain why I crave popcorn after workouts. This Three-Bean Delight looks wonderful, I need to try it. Thanks!
I love intuitive cooking! I used to follow recipes to a T but now I just go with whatever feels right, which is kind of sad because I don’t feel like I can really share recipes anymore if I’m not measuring anything.
That’s the trick for bloggers, yes? I’ve started to post recipes in which I simply list the ingredients and encourage readers to just “go with it” and the response has been good. But baking …that’s a whole other issue! LOL
This looks so delicious! 🙂
Thank you, Kelly!
I can’t wait for you to get back to work (I’m sure you can) because we need to discuss. After getting some biomass measurement (calipers and how hormones distribute fat), Pat was diagnosed as gluten-intolerant. As a fan of all things wheat, this has put a snag in my cooking! Can’t wait to see you next week!
Eek, my worst nightmare! I’m actually reading a book right now called Vegan for Life. It indicates that only 1% of the population have celiac disease (permanent intolerance to gluten); some people have a non-celiac wheat allergy. I wonder if Pat’s doc can explore that further. I know lots of people in the blog world who have fabulous gluten-free recipes, but there is some controversy to going gluten-free when it’s not necessary (particularly for vegans–the book cites research that gluten-free vegans may reduce the levels of beneficial gut bacteria) But Pat’s not vegan so that’s neither here nor there! Yes, let’s discuss next week! I can’t wait to see you!
so i see kombu used alot in our kindof healthy eating…i bought some….have used it once…but not so sure what it does?….i willl be making some miso soup for my kids with shiro miso paste, bonito flakes and some kombu….also, see lots of vegan recipes using kombu…..natural source of salt? minerals?
Kombu is an alternative iodine source (mineral). Using salt in the pressure cooker or rice cooker for beans can dry them out (which is why you should add salt, to taste, after cooking). Soaking the dry beans in water and kombu adds some flavor and, allegedly, tenderizes the beans.
I toss a small, stamp size piece of kombu in the water when I start the miso soup process (instead of a pinch of salt) and I tend to use wakame as the primary sea vegetable in the soup and finely dice the kombu after cooking and add it back (it’s very chewy)
Bonito flakes are dry fish, yes? I can’t recall if you are vegan, which is why I’m asking.
ps the concept of intuitive cooking is enlightening! now only if i did not have so much ‘kid’ chaos that muddles my intuition……the kids were gone last week at grandma’s….amazing how my mind cleared up and i was able to think—lol