My B.E.A.N. Bin

I came home on Wednesday and I felt like a 5 year-old who just woke up on Christmas morning when I found this on my back porch:

That, my friends, is greatness in a little green cooler crate. It's my first order from Green B.E.A.N. Delivery, which is a punchy little company making fresh organic produce and other locally produced groceries available and convenient. Very convenient. BEAN is an ackronym for the major initiatives of the group: Biodynamic, Education, Agriculture and Nutrition They pack these babies into a cooler with an ice pack and sit them right on your doorstep. The produce bins vary slightly from week to week, depending on what's in season and what's available. Now, for real?! Yes, for real. Seriously, they couldn't make healthy eating any easier unless they shoved the stuff down the hatch for you.

Some might be a little averse to the lack of consistency of the goodness bundled in the bin from week to week. I think it's great, and I'll tell you why: variety is the spice of life. Change it up! One key to eating healthy consistently? Not being bored. Curiosity in itself is enough to make you eat food, even apart from the taste. We all tend to find foods we really like and wear the hell out of them. I do it. Grapefruit has been my choice dead horse for the winter. I still love it, but with the variety comes new taste and nutritional benefit. Holla if you love the double dip...

This week my bin included a head of cauliflower, a head of broccolette, 4 pink lady apples, 2 grapefruit, collard greens, a yellow onion, 4 oranges, a bag of fingerling potatoes, and a pint of grape tomatoes (all organic.) What would I normally not gravitate toward in the grocery? The cauli, the fingerlings, and since I've fallen in love with chard, I'd probably go with that versus the collard greens. I still have some cooking to do, as I've been eyeballing this recipe and this recipe to use the greens and this one for the fingerling potatoes.

I curried some of the cauliflower and broccolette with some roasted parsnips and turnips and ate them with a black bean burger covered in a sauce of pumpkin puree, nutritional yeast, miso, and a little coconut sugar. Doused those things in parsley flakes and went to town on those buggers.
 
I made a new green concoction with some of the sturdy collard greens: the Maui Wowee Green Monstah. As suggested by the name, she's got some pineapple in her, along with a meijer lemon and some shredded coconut.

You can't taste the collard greens at all. I swear. And see, I'll even admit this to you: do not attempt to hide cauliflower in a smoothie. I tried it. I flopped. Hard. I wanted a pumpkin pie smoothie, and though I'd sneak a little extra nutritional bang for the bunch in there, so I pulled a chunk of the cauli off my bunch and threw it in the blender. Took a sample taste. It tasted like a pie. A pie made out of cauliflower. Gag. Gag again. Eventually I added enough additional milk, pumpkin, vanilla protein and cinnamon to cover that shit up, but it still took convincing myself with every sip that I couldn't taste or smell it anymore. See? The seemingly normal looking smoothie was nasty, and the scary green one is delicious. Don't judge a book, folks.


Maui Wowee Green Monstah

Ingredients

1 cup unsweetened almond milk
3-4 oz. silken tofu (or about 1/5 of the package)
1 tbsp chia seeds (or ground flaxseed)
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 large collard leaf, stem included
1/4 cup pineapple
1 meijer lemon, seeded
2 tbsp unsweetened coconut
stevia, to taste

Combine all ingredients in a blender on high speed until well combined, at least 90 seconds. Put on your lei, and hula immediately after consuming.