She's Choppin' Broccolay

Not many paradigm shifts begin with a bean salad, but for me it did. Because of a simple bean salad recipe with fresh ingredients and a zippy vinaigrette, I am astonished to admit that I am now a cook.

After a recent vacation which stretched the limits of indulgence, even for me, Hubby and I decided to eat a "cleansing" diet for a week. This was a little dietary experiment suggested by a friend in which you eat from just four food groups: fruit, vegetables, nuts & beans. If it sounds a little familiar to you, it's because it's also the diet of a squirrel.

We decided that olive oil, herbs and spices, and a little seafood were also allowed. Since I am currently on summer vacation, and Hubs works a full time job, I took on the responsibility of figuring out what we would eat. Where did I turn? Bean salads. I figured they were filling, full of protein, and they were cheap. (Did I mention that after this vacation we were not only fat, but also poor?)

Little did I know then, but the bean salad offers a vast palate of flavors, textures and health benefits with which to experiment. My first attempt was a black eyed pea salad with a dijon vinaigrette. I happened to be flipping through a cookbook looking for recipes with ingredients we had, and there it was. Looked simple enough, so I got out the supplies and followed the steps. If I may toot my own horn (no pun intended), it was delicious. I was so surprised with myself as I willingly took bite after bite, savoring the delicate blend of complex flavors and textures. I marveled at the fact that this dish that I had made was not only somewhat attractive, but it was downright tasty.

This was a momentous revelation! A little history: Up until this point my culinary repertoire included spaghetti (from a jar), eggs, microwave burritos, broccoli and cheese, oatmeal, and oven nachos. To my credit, I also knew how to chop vegetables and fruits and put them in a bowl to assemble a salad. Still, this is a pitiful list for a thirty-four year old woman with a family and working appliances. But Hubby is a professional chef. An enabler. Why learn to cook when you don't have to and you don't have a clue what you're doing? A conclusion drawn of laziness and fear.

Thus, I embraced the legume and set out on a mission to explore it's possibilities. With Internet recipe databases as my compass, I forged onward into a week of bean dishes. Kidney beans & corn; chickpeas with garlic & parsley; curried lentils with cashews; white bean dip. Some were better than others, but amazingly, they were all edible, and most delicious. To add to my amazement, for some reason, all of a sudden cooking was fun to me. I enjoyed figuring out the secret formula that each recipe had in common. With the bean salad, it seemed that the common denominators were some type of bean+some chopped fresh veggies & herbs+some type of vinegar+lemon or lime juice+olive oil+salt & pepper.

After the legume, I moved on to fresh local produce as the centerpiece (preferably as local as my backyard--still broke at this point, but we have a big veggie garden). Now it was raw kale and chard salad with grated carrots, rutabaga & avocado; a red cabbage sweet and sour slaw; roasted beet and feta salad; and a lentil salad with cherry tomatoes, lemon thyme, fennel and roasted garlic vinaigrette (my favorite creation so far.)

Then it got crazy all up in this place. I'm talkin' pressure cooker, homemade pizza crust, tzatziki (that's right, t to the zatziki) with homemade pita chips and greek potato salad (what what). And it all tasted good! I'm on a downhill roll people, and nothing but a lack of tupperware can stop me.

And here's the weirdest part: cooking is not hard. You find a highly rated recipe on the Internet for something that sounds good to you, and you follow the directions. I don't know why this process seemed so out of reach to me before now, but I'm glad I finally figured it out.

Now, if you're picking up on the you-can-do-it-too subtext of this post so far, I will fess up to a couple advantages. Like I said, I live with a professional, so my kitchen is nicely stocked with most of the secondary ingredients and seasonings in recipes. This makes spontaneous whims to cook possible when I've found a recipe that looks good. Also, we have a good set of knives, and cookware that doesn't suck. This is important. And a final key to my success: really good olive oil.

My Aunt Sharon (also a professional chef--see why I've been intimidated?) bought us a gallon of this fantastic extra virgin olive oil from a mediterranean market. It comes from Lebanon, it's got very little English writing on it, and it's so rich I've had to stop myself from drinking it straight out of the bottle. Seriously, it's intoxicating. Since then, I've done a little research, and it turns out most olive oils in American groceries are made to taste more mild for the "American palate." This, in my opinion, is a subtle form of terrorism. Never again will I buy that thin, acidic olive oil. Olive oil should be thick, buttery, and, well, olivey. So my last piece of advice is get to a mediterranean market near you and buy a mass quantity of olive oil from the Middle East.

So that's the big news. I'm a cook now, that's all. Take a moment to digest it, and then let me know when you're coming for dinner.