Legumes are an excellent food source because they are economical, have a low glycemic index, high fiber, high protein, sustainable, gentle on Mother Earth and is a base natural unprocessed food. They are a great alternative to meat, or as an addition. Beans don’t impart much flavour, so you need to be more creative with how you use them.
My family did not really grow up eating a lot of beans. We really only had kidney beans in stews, black eyed beans in rice and navy beans in tomato sauce, from a can. Learning more about beans was eye opening.
I have heard about wabi-sabi before but have not grasped the meaning. This article grasps the concepts.
Originating in Taoism during China’s Song dynasty (960-1279) before being passed onto Zen Buddhism, wabi-sabi was originally seen as an austere, restrained form of appreciation. Today it encapsulates a more relaxed acceptance of transience, nature and melancholy, favouring the imperfect and incomplete in everything, from architecture to pottery to flower arranging.
Wabi, which roughly means ‘the elegant beauty of humble simplicity’, and sabi, which means ‘the passing of time and subsequent deterioration’, were combined to form a sense unique to Japan and pivotal to Japanese culture. But just as Buddhist monks believed that words were the enemy of understanding, this description can only scratch the surface of the topic.
