How we came to believe beans are thrilling
Try to find some joy in the repetition of quarantine meal prep
I couldn’t wait to start our first baby on solid foods. But for months, Beatrice rejected everything I offered. Steamed butternut squash was a no, she passed on baked sweet potatoes and scoffed at stewed apples. What she would eat greedily: chickpeas. Once they’d been released from their offending skins, of course. I peeled them happily, grateful she would eat something with enthusiasm. And so, we travelled with tiny canisters full of chickpeas, leaving discarded skins at restaurants and a trail of them behind the stroller at the park. I don’t quite remember how I came to open a can of chickpeas, hoping that it would be the fix, but I know I felt panicked about the future — I loved food! Would she ever love food? — and, by that point, was too exhausted to put much effort into prepping anything else. It wasn’t the way I’d envisioned our meals together, but babies defy plans and expectations. And so, you might say, do pandemics.
Before we were recently asked, then told, to stay at home, I mostly longed to be in my kitchen. Cooking helped me slow down and take care of my family mindfully, instead of rushing and scrambling all the time. On weeknights, I’d spend an hour commuting home, then another hour on dinner prep. Sundays saw me batch cooking for hours, before making a lovely dinner to close out the weekend.
Now, my “desk” is the table where we eat all our meals; my “office” has a view of the milk my kids always seem to leave on the counter, just beside the fridge. The kitchen has become less of an escape and more… inevitable. Though cooking still feels important, it’s not the unfurling it once was. Cooking, particularly now, is about control and consistency. It’s the thread that pulls me through the days and weeks. And it’s often a slog — a reality for all, and maybe especially parents. After all, four people, three meals a day (not including the incessant snacks), every day for a year works out to 4,380 plates of food slung. But it might as well be 43,800. So the trick for me (though there’s no real trick) has been to try to find some joy in the repetition. Or at least some relief.
I have found both in a can of chickpeas. And in small white beans; and lentils — red, brown and green; and compact black beans and hunky white limas. Beans (and legumes) are wholesome and tasty on their own; they don’t need a fuss. Cooking with them is like discovering stored up energy, because they don’t require too much of mine. They are not fancy (well, they might be with some ricotta and lemon zest), but they are filling. They make a meal without requiring a trip to the store. They pump me up when I can barely pull myself together. And maybe it’s the perpetual isolation talking, but these days, beans thrill me.
You know what’s exciting? The textures you can coax out of chickpeas. I can make smashed chickpea salad by crushing chickpeas with a fork, add olive oil and lemon juice, toss in chopped red onion, olives and parsley, then heap it onto mayo-heavy toast. Or I can simmer chickpeas in a soup, gently crushing them with a potato masher to thicken the broth. Chickpeas roasted with spices until golden and crisp can be a snack, a crouton, or a meal alongside roasted veg, naan and lemony yogurt. Thrown together with tuna, chopped carrot and celery and olive oil, chickpeas can save lunch, which always seems to sneak up on me.
I find peace in white beans, too — especially my husband’s slow-cooked molasses beans, ladled over fried bread or superlong baked potatoes, with all the toppings: pickled onion, grated cheddar, sour cream, chopped bacon. And in the navy beans I add to a big pan of greens (usually kale, but spinach or collards work too) that have been sautéed with a splash of stock, crushed garlic and chili flakes, then pile onto bread. (A yolky egg on top of this is perfection.) And in the large lima beans I make a ritual of soaking, then simmering for hours so I can watch them fatten to fill my palm. They are meaty, buttery, almost sweet, and we eat them simply in their broth, beads of olive oil and grated Parm floating on the surface.
I’ve had very long relationships with all these bean dishes. They’re like friends: I love the ones I have and I don’t need many more.
And yet. It came to me like most recipes do, on Instagram via a friend, and I wanted to make it immediately. But I knew to file it away for a moment of need. Then, the next Monday, I woke at 4 a.m. with a start and couldn’t get back to sleep. In a break from back-toback Zoom meetings, I rinsed two cans of white beans. I left them in a colander in the sink, and later caught the kids sneaking a few handfuls. It got dark at 3 p.m. My youngest knocked his head on our shared desk (the dining room table) during virtual yoga with his class. I kissed tears, then went to the kitchen to smash and mince three cloves of garlic. I answered a few emails, grabbed a can of tomato paste from the basement and moved laundry from washer to drier. I joined another call as I began heating olive oil in a large round skillet, then added the garlic and chili flakes to sizzle. I swirled in fat spoonfuls of tomato paste and watched it caramelize. And then, the big moment: those drained beans went in, along with water. Just beans and water. I dragged my wooden spoon through to bring it all together, already marvelling. To finish: a ball of mozzarella, shredded and scattered over the top, then into the oven for a few minutes. What came out was more than what went in. We hovered over the pan, watching the cheese bubble at the edges, incredulous that dinner was already ready. You can imagine that first spoonful: saucy, steamy, a chorus line of cheese pulls. We mopped it up with store-bought garlic bread and balanced it with a lemony green salad. I felt roast chicken pride, three-hour Bolognese pride, over this simple meal. These tomato-y, cheesy baked white beans — pizza beans, to us — were joy and relief.
Tonight, I’m making a tray of turmeric and cumin-spiced roasted chickpeas and cauliflower, a bi-weekly standard. And on the weekend, I’ll try another new-to-me recipe: blackeyed peas and tomatoes stewed in peanut sauce. Things won’t always be the way they are now, but I’ll keep cooking. And as long as there are beans, the kids will eat well.