My family has never been the kind to stockpile ingredients to make meals. I grew up in a home where we went to the grocery store daily to buy whatever ingredients we would need for that dinner - and the results were rarely healthy. My parents are very much meat and potatoes (and not much else) who love fattening, cholesterol-laden foods. They scoff at my soy milk and made terrible fun of me the last time I went vegetarian (I haven't told them about this time yet to safe myself some sanity). Somehow, they both only suffer from mild high blood pressure now, but I'm afraid it'll catch up with them later.

At any rate, I've had to break a lot of eating habits that my parents ingrained at me from a young age. Giving up the meat isn't so bad, but my whole life I've hated beans. And when I say hate, I mean the mere sight of a pot of brown beans on my mamaw's stove would make my stomach turn. While I seriously doubt I'll ever be eating from that pot - they do simmer the beans with a big hunk of pork fatback, after all - pantry stocking is helping me to slowly love the bean. Sl-o-o-o-o-o-wly. The rare exception to my phobia was hummus, which was introduced to me by a friend and her hippie mama many a year ago.

I've read in basically every vegan and vegetarian book that I've ever laid my hands on that a well-stocked pantry is the key to being able to eat healthy, convenient meat-free meals. So as much as I can fit in my allocated part of our shared pantry, I have various canned veggies, TVP, cereals, grains, pastas, and, yes, even beans. I can't say I've ventured in to the the whole "just a bowl full of beans" yet...and that'll probably be a long while...but I've eaten them in conjunction with steamed veggies and it was quite good. I was also super excited to look at this recipe and find out that I have everything to make it in my well-stocked pantry, except for the green pepper, the chili powder and cayenne. Hallelujah! I'm getting there.

It was annoying to me that it seemed I was spending so much money outright to stock up my pantry, and all I kept thinking about was "Why am I doing this again? I can get 5 Lean Cuisines for $10 at Kroger today". But I trudge on, and I'm starting to reap the benefits. It's nice to look at a recipe and not have to go to the store to get anything, although I will be picking up the other stuff for that recipe that I need...and a few more cans of beans to pantry up to replace the two that I'll be using.

Posted by Lena on 12 February 2007 at 10:14 AM | Permalink