Beans, beans the magical fruit

I've become obsessed with beans recently. Like, I'll cook up and eat a pound of beans each week. Mostly, it's a result of this fantastic recipe from the New York Times that combines black beans with corn tortillas. I ate this meal every day for a good 2 - 3 weeks straight, always craving more. No joke.

I think part of this of the reason for this obsession was because the black bean puree looked like chocolate, and I love chocolate, but also because it reminded me of all the corn tortillas I ate on my vacation to Mexico. Mmm...delicious food associations...

Anywhos, since my enfrijoladas binge, I've branched out to other types of beans. It helps that I've found a way to make delicious beans from scratch in about an hour and a half. Here's how (copied verbatim from The Paupered Chef):

Ingredients:

• 1 pound beans
• 1/2 tablespoons salt

1. Preheat the oven to 250 F. 
2. Dump the beans into a large dutch oven or pot with tight fitting lid.  Pick out any broken pieces. Add the salt.  Top with enough water to cover the beans by an inch and a half.  Bring pot to a boil.
3. Cover the pot, and set in the oven.  Cook for 75 minutes. 
4. About 45 minutes in, check on the beans.  If they look too dry add some boiling water to the pot.
5. After 75 minutes they should be done.

After a weekend full of booze, crappy cupcakes, and fried food, I'm really craving a salad and/or something unprocessed and mostly uncooked. That's where the beans come into play. With knowing how to make good beans quickly, I've been adding them to everything and they're a perfect filling ingredient in a salad.

(On a side note, it's weird to see how quickly my body has gotten used to "good" food and somewhat requires it when I haven't eaten well for a few days.)

So yesterday I made a white bean and chicken salad and today's dinner is a Greek-style salad with spaghetti squash. I used to object to eating spaghetti squash on principle (see one of the last paragraphs in this post) because I saw it as diet food. But The Roommie made a very delicious and simple spaghetti squash salad last week and I really liked the texture of it so I'm giving it another shot tonight.