Pasta and Pinto Beans

For the twenty seventh day of the cleanse, I started with a fruit smoothie (blackberries, blueberries, banana) for breakfast and then finished up the remaining simple stir fry and almond lime sauce from two suppers ago for lunch (I will likely finish up the coconut rice and zucchini boat stir fry for supper on Friday when there are other left over vegetables to fill out the meal). For supper, I started with a red leaf lettuce, dandelion greens, and arugula salad (I was able to get to the grocery store to restock!) and then had Pasta and Pinto Beans. This was a very simple supper. To start, I cooked the pinto beans (1 cup pinto beans, soaked for 4 hours earlier in the day, drained, rinsed, covered with fresh water, brought to boil, reduced to simmer for 40 minutes). Normally, I cut up the vegetables and make the stir fry prior to making the salad, but to give the pinto beans time to cook, I started with the salad preparations first. Once the salad was made, I started heating the water for the rice pasta (tonight I used tinkyada brown rice spirals, which also cooked up very nicely in the large pasta pot) and once boiling, cooked the pasta for 15 minutes. At the same time as the pasta water was heating up and then as the pasta was cooking, I made a stir fry with olive oil, onions, garlic, green onions, portobello mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, green beans, snow peas, broccoli, cauliflower, and green kale. I always add kale to the stir fry last - it doesn't need to be cooked for long, just lightly steamed from the heat of the stir fry. After the kale has been in the pan for 1- 2 minutes, I remove the pan from the heat and cover the stir fry - this will also further steam the kale a little bit and it will be tender when eaten. Once the meal was dished up, it was seasoned with flax oil and sea salt (see picture to the left for finished meal). This was a simple, but satisfying meal.