The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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I have a genetic defect that puts me at extremely high risk for developing a fatal neurodegenerative disease in my 50s or 60s. Recent evidence suggests that reducing neuroinflammation might help delay or even prevent onset, and there's also evidence that a diet high in soluble fiber can reduce systemic and neuroinflammation through increasing production of butyrate and reducing production of lipopolysaccharides by gut bacteria.
Which is to say, I've been trying to eat more legumes, but legumes are kind of a pain to cook. I want to live, but I'm also lazy. Purely by chance, a package of ZENB spaghetti, which is made of yellow peas and nothing else, caught my eye at 7-Eleven, and I decided to try it out. With the caveat that I have eaten very little pasta in the past 20 years, and pasta enthusiasts may disagree, it doesn't taste much different from wheat pasta to me. Pasta's mostly just a vehicle for sauce anyway, right?
The more people buy it, the more likely they stay in business, and the less effort it takes for me to do everything I can to keep my brain from eating itself, so I'm pimping it out here. If you like pasta, but wish it had more protein, fiber, and potassium, with fewer empty calories and/or no gluten, try ZENB pasta! Your Italian grandmother will hate it, but you might not!
As a fellow legume pasta eater, there's chickpea pastas out there too, lentil pastas, green pea, etc, if you want variety in your legumes. I've never heard of ZENB funny enough but will check it out.
Oh and lentils cook in about 20 minutes if you boil them, quicker than beans. Basically just fill a pan with 2 cups water to 1 cup lentils, then bring the water to boil and dump in the lentils and cook for 20-30 minutes, can add dried spices to taste. That's how we do it in our house, it's simple but doesn't taste bad and you can add stuff like basil or bay leaves or curry etc.
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Buy a tin of canned chilli con carne, and a can of black beans (in water). Mix half of each can, and you've got a full and cheapish meal with extra legumes.
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You're aware that you can buy pre-cooked/softened legumes that are ready to eat right out of the can/package right? Its more expensive than the dried stuff but its still cheap and super low effort.
Or is it some other part of the process that feels like a pain?
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My regional home cuisine is very legume rich. I can recommend a few options. Legumes are only high effort because they need soaking & sporuting. Other than that, they are very easy to cook.
They may look daunting if you've never cooked Indian food, but it is genuinely super-easy once you have done it a couple of times. All of these are lazy 10 minute recipes. You just need to do 2 minutes of work the night before.
If you've never had these in a home-made style, then try out the ones you get at trader joe's. It's a good representation of what you can expect.
Generally, talk to people with celiac. They incorporate lentils into a lot of their meals.
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No. Emphatically no. Pasta should taste good on its own, even if you eat it without sauce. It's kind of like bread - one doesn't normally eat just a slice of bread by itself, but bread should still taste good even if you do eat it plain.
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