Monday, August 24, 2009

perfect protein

So I am an omnivore and all, but spend so much of the year being a vegetarian for religious reasons (plus, honestly, just love my plants and am not always in the mood for meat) so I am very keyed in to the non-animal protein thing.

As the nutritionally informed among you probably already know, the only complete proteins (all the essential amino acids) are in animal products, soy, and, somewhat randomly, quinoa. It’s definitely possible to great protein without those things, but it means you combine proteins. One of my favorite, simplest ways to do that?

RICE AND BEANS!   DSCF1942

With, obviously, some adornment. This was easy peasy. The only time consuming thing was cooking up brown rice (and I made a 4 serving batch and it cooked while I was catching up with old House episodes online, so an excellent productive use of time anyway). I made that, in veggie broth for extra flava and cause it needed using. When that was almost done, I mashed up some refried beans with some of the homemade salsa juice and nuked that.

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Toppings were shredded cheese, avocado (browned a bit but I promise it still tasted awesome), and more homemade salsa.

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Muy delicioso! And nutritious. Along with protein, this is packed full of fiber, wonderful monounsaturated fatty acids from the ‘cado, lycopene from the tomatoes, capsaicin from the hot peppers. GREAT STUFF!

You know what tasted REALLY good? When I mixed it all together :D  

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Gross looking but heavvvvvvvvvvvvvenly tasting!

4 comments:

Stephanie said...

Rice and beans are an awesome combo, I so agree! I also like making coconut rice (light coconut milk in lieu of half the water) and black beans w/ tomatoes... YUMMMM! Nice post :)

Angharad said...

That does NOT look gross to me! It looks like mushed up heaven on a plate! Haha. Ohhh rice and beans is such a good combo! Especially with cheese and avo thrown in - bravo!

Anonymous said...

Looking good, Lele! Your homemade salsa looks like a hit, and the entire dish is far from gross.

-Kristen

Andrea@WellnessNotes said...

The dish is beautiful, especially all mixed together! ;)