Thinkin' Beans ...

I received a few responses about my healthy conundrum -- trying to eat healthy, eat fresh, and keep the cost down. Now, in defense of myself, I do think we're a pretty healthy family. My kids voluntarily ask for fruits and vegetables every day (including prunes, believe it or not), and while their proportionate intake of such items could probably improve a bit (especially with the veggies), I'm just glad they ask and eat. We eat whole grains when we can (but boy, do I love white rice rather than brown!), we try to be fiberlicious ... You won't find a single cookie in our house (just don't look around Christmas time), nor candy, although we do adore our ice cream. I'd say we're really quite balanced. Just don't bring some food expert or nutritionist into my abode, for I fear my view might be promptly dashed.

It's the freshness factor that's tricky. I buy lettuce at the grocery store, fully intending to make a salad ... and then I find that I just don't want to eat lettuce. Period. And soon, I have droopy inedible leaves taking up space in my fridge. I have yet to find - or figure out - this balance.

In response to the recent tip about eating beans ... I find that I keep coming back to this, for I know they're incredibly healthy, yet beans are still foreign territory for me. I didn't grow up in a bean-eating family. They're a good, solid, Dutch, meat-and-potatoes kind of family. Green beans, yes -- anything else, only in the occasional pot of chili. When you don't grow up with something frequently on your menu, it's a little hard to adopt that food category later on in life. I salivate over chili ... but that's about all I have truly mastered with beans. I've been making some extraordinary hummus lately -- Don can't stop vacuuming the bowl clean -- and that's been my first foray into garbanzo beans. But ... what else? I'm bean-illiterate.

Any bean-eaters ... good tips? Ideas? And how in the world would I get my kiddies to eat them?!