Want healthy in a hurry? Try our favorite beans and greens recipes

Mid-December, I acquired a textual content from my mom: “This yr, I am making peanut butter balls, pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing, ginger cookies, cranberry-date bars and I used to be going to attempt to provide you with some type of eggnog cookie.” 

There was a beat, then she despatched a follow-up message. 

“I’m not speaking like dozens of every,” she wrote. “Just a bit assortment of issues.” (Reader, there have been nonetheless dozens of every). In the meantime, her mom, my maternal grandmother, had already launched into her personal batches for the vacations: chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge, sugar cookies, gingerbread and sure some competing cranberry-date bars and peanut butter balls. 

If my dad’s mom have been nonetheless alive, she’d have added to the combination, most notably together with her pillowy-soft chocolate chip cookies, which she positioned on the baking sheet with such exacting precision that all of them appeared shockingly uniform; my siblings and I used to lovingly joke that she rearranged the chocolate chips with a pair of tweezers in order that the top end result can be an identical. 

This to say, I come from a line of ladies who bake — I imply, actually bake — for the vacations. I’ve picked up the behavior, too, and located my lane making miniature gingerbread cloud truffles, home made cinnamon rolls and various breads. Should you’re curious, ask me someday concerning the yr I made 72 miniature babka knots in my studio condo galley kitchen as Christmas presents. 

Like many individuals, the vacations have been a season of sugar surges and dips, and whereas I am not one for equating meals with guilt or disgrace — I politely, however promptly, unfollow anybody who posts about what number of leaping jacks or sit-ups you’d must do to “work off” numerous vacation treats — the primary of the yr gives a time to rebalance my weight loss plan so it isn’t 20% royal icing. 

January is once I lean on beans and greens, so listed below are a few of our favourite recipes and tales from the Salon archives that actually let these substances shine. This checklist first appeared on Salon Meals’s weekly meals e-newsletter, “The Chunk.” You should definitely subscribe for particular recipes, essays and how-tos that come straight to your inbox each weekend. 

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Kale-ing it this vacation season 

Earlier this week, I made a variation of Molly Baz’s crunchy hen salad, which Mary Elizabeth Williams covered this summer in her weekly column Fast and Soiled. Sometimes, the recipe makes use of a head of Napa cabbage as the bottom, then builds taste with briny cotija cheese, radishes, cilantro, garlic, lime, shredded rotisserie hen — and a wholesome little bit of crunch from crushed corn nuts or Fritos. 

My model concerned rescuing a bunch of farmer’s market kale from the fridge and topping it with goat cheese, an errant handful of peppery arugula, corn nuts, rotisserie hen and a few clementine segments and juice. Whereas it wasn’t utterly true to the unique, this model was extremely flavorful, filling and served as a pleasant kitchen clean-out recipe that was heavy on the greens. 

Use Molly and Mary Elizabeth’s recipe as a base to your winter salads, together with Maggie Hennessy’s guide for digging out of your next salad rut (plus, her panzanella recipe fit for a hearty lunch). 

Bean pies, gratins and love letters 

In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Frances Moore Lappé’s “Food regimen for a Small Planet,” Mary Elizabeth Williams revisited her fall bean pie which — with its nice mixture of corn, kidney beans and grated cheddar cheese — is absolutely seasonless. It is an ideal dish for cool winter evenings when you don’t need one thing too heavy, however nonetheless comforting. 

For one thing a bit of extra decadent, David Kinch’s beans and greens gratin blends a wholesome quantity of melting cheese with cannellini beans and torn kale, all topped with a crispy breadcrumb crust. Jackie Freeman’s cauliflower and lima bean gratin is an analogous recipe — use both as a jumping-off level primarily based on what you’ve gotten in your personal fridge and pantry. 

Whilst you’re ready to your pies and gratins to bake, take just a few moments to learn Maggie Hennessy’s love letter to kidney beans, through which she “wax[es] poetic on this particular bean that’s usually, inconceivably, ignored in lots of households.”