Breakfast For Lunch

(Please pardon the swiped-from-the-internet and low-quality-taken-with-iPod pics until I get a replacement battery for my camera.)
Scrambled eggs and black beans was one of my favorite breakfasts back when I was an omnivore. The first time I encountered this food combination was in 2001, when I spent a summer at an orphanage in Guatemala. At the time, I was a bit of a bean-aphobe. But because black beans were a part of most of the meals I was eating there, I was attempting to develop an appreciation for them. I started off eating two or three beans during each meal (and that's not an exaggeration). I worked up to a spoonful per meal. Then one day I was invited to eat dinner with a family I knew, and black beans and scrambled eggs were what was being served. In addition to being afraid of beans, I also was fairly afraid of offending anyone in my new home culture. I thought, "well, I've been working up to this, and maybe I'll just eat mainly eggs with a few bites of black beans and no one will notice." Not even close.  I watched as the mother placed one heaping spoonful of black beans onto my plate. I started to get nervous. But then before she handed me my plate, she delivered another huge spoonful to my plate. I was slightly petrified.

I watched as the three kids in the house began to eat - each bite was a quickly arranged combination of black and yellow. I tried doing what they were doing, attempting to fool my brain into thinking this was familiar food that I enjoyed. As I chewed, I noticed that there was a certain balance of textures and flavors. It was warm and hardy. A rich salty flavor. Would you believe, I ate the whole entire plate?? Something in my brain changed gears, and I found myself liking those black oval-shaped legumes! Since then, I've told myself that if you try a new or never-liked food 7 times with a good attitude, you will learn to like it.

I can't remember the boy's name but his sisters names' were Sefora and Abigail. Really nice kids, and I had an extra soft spot in my heart for Abigail (pronounced "Ah-bee-ga-eel" in Spanish), a precious 6-year old with the cutest short haircut. She would point to herself and say "Ah-bee-ga-eel," and then point to me and say "Ah-bee-ga-eel." It was almost as if finding another person who shared her name (who would play and talk with her) also affirmed not only her name, but her as a valuable person.

In addition to memories from that summer that haven't faded, my love of black beans has remained strong. At some point I learned how to make my own black beans that rivaled the bowlfuls I ate in Guatemala: sautee onions and garlic in a frying pan, add a can of beans with its liquid, add about 1/4 cup additional water, and let it boil/simmer for about 10 minutes. The beans come out soft and flavorful, and just saucy enough for eating on top of scrambled eggs.

Now that I've traveled and lived in a couple different countries, I find black beans to be a food that I will crave once in awhile, no matter how good the local cuisine is. In South Korea, I used to buy cans of black beans at the foreign food mart in Itaewon, Seoul. In Thailand, I treat myself every once in awhile to a meal at a Mexican restaurant that has a nice-sized helping of black beans. Here in Pennsylvania, I can easily buy a can of black beans, and I'm even getting accustomed to using the very inexpensive dried black beans which require some planning ahead and soaking.

Today I wanted to use up some tofu in the fridge, so I decided to try recreating "scrambled eggs" for the first time - for lunch (breakfast was my staple favorite oatmeal with fruit and nuts). I found this recipe on the Post Punk Kitchen website. It's more elaborate than I would have come up with off the top of my head. It's got garlic and mushrooms in there, along with a nice spice blend of tumeric (which gives the white tofu a nice yellowish-eggy color), thyme, cumin and paprika. The recipe called for 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast, which I had bought recently because I keep hearing about it on vegan blogs. Today I finally looked it up to see if people use it for more reasons than "to add a cheesy texture or flavor sprinkled on top of pasta or soup." The answer is YES! It's a source of protein and vitamins, especially the B Complex. Ah, Vitamin B12 - the one vitamin that's no longer easy to get from non-meat food sources (it comes from the ground and is found on vegetable skins but often gets scrubbed off nowadays). I sprinkled some on my pasta the other day... and wasn't so crazy about it. It doesn't taste like cheese in my opinion. It's kinda bitter and sour, and is really just flaky, not chewy or crunchy or anything like that. So for my scrambled tofu, I just added less than a tablespoon.

I cooked the black beans in a separate frying pan in the manner I described above, and each had about 10 minutes to cook and absorb their flavors. Then I served them up like so, complete with a glass of "morning" orange juice.

Like the star pattern? That just happened by chance, but I'll give myself a gold star for presentation and taste anyway. ;) If you're expecting typical egg flavor, you'll get more than you bargained for. Those spices I added were really nice. Not over the top at all. It was a nice warm homey flavor that had me shoveling in half-black-half-yellow spoonful after spoonful, just like those kids in Guatemala who first inspired me to eat and enjoy my black beans.