My favourite organic recipe is probably a huge batch of chilli con carne cooked with organic low fat British minced beef, tons of kidney beans, tomatoes and baked beans.
In the 80s, mum used to make a beautiful beef in red wine sauce, which I thought very exotic. And an incredible chilli con carne, with baked beans so it wasn't too spicy for us. Later, when I asked for the recipes, she said: 'I don't know - they were Colman's or Schwartz's packet mixes.' It completely ruined it for me.
Be aware of what you cook tomatoes with. The high acid content of the tomato slows down the cooking process of some other foods. Dried beans cooked with tomatoes added to the pot can take up to 20 percent more cooking time than beans without tomatoes added.
Look, I made a commitment to corn 17 years ago. Sure, I'm a man. I like to go to a barbecue and see beans that I like: baked beans, red beans, black beans, big plump garbanzos. But in the end, I always come home to my sweet, sweet corn.
My mom cooked the same food every day - tortillas, beans and meat. If it was enchiladas, it was - tortillas, beans and meat. If it was burritos, it was still - tortillas, beans and meat.
I have my great grandmother's recipe for black beans, all the way from Cuba, and I know how to make those. I'm actually pretty good at it now. But my first time, the beans actually exploded in the pot, so I had black beans just dripping from the ceiling - which is actually a dream come true for most Cubans. It was a nightmare to clean.
I like beans. Lentils are beans, right? I love beans and rice.
I grew up in a household where we cooked all the time. My mom cooked all the time; my dad cooked. My grandmothers cooked. I have memories of sitting on the counter and snapping green beans with my grandmother.
The early days of being vegetarian meant ordering plain salads with vinaigrette and a baked potato. You could put the potato in the salad, and, if you were lucky, there were kidney beans.
I can't eat beans - all beans. I think because I'm half Cuban. So growing up, we were always eating black beans and rice, and I think I just said, 'Enough with it,' and I can't even stand to taste it anymore.
On 'Masterchef' I'm always a big fan of the puddings. But I have to confess, as a child I absolutely loved butterscotch angel delight. My mum used to make it in huge bowls. She's one of the worst cooks ever, bless her. The best thing she did was a chilli con carne, and that was still terrible.
My diet is mostly composed of whole-grain cereals, legumes, beans, lentils. Lots of cooked, baked, or steamed vegetables. Lots of spices like curcumin or cumin that help aid digestion. Some superfoods.
Organic is something we can all partake of and benefit from. When we demand organic, we are demanding poison-free food. We are demanding clean air. We are demanding pure, fresh water. We are demanding soil that is free to do its job and seeds that are free of toxins. We are demanding that our children be protected from harm. We all need to bite the bullet and do what needs to be done—buy organic whenever we can, insist on organic, fight for organic and work to make it the norm. We must make organic the conventional choice and not the exception available only to the rich and educated.
Black beans and soy beans are the cornerstones of longevity diets around the world.
It's rubbish to say that just because it's organic, it's better. There's good organic, and there's bad organic. We should all be thinking about taste, not some stamp on the package.
When I can afford it, I'm very into organic food and I love going to restaurants that use organic produce and such. I think that it's a shame for everyone that, unfortunately, organic can be pretty expensive, so you just do what you can.
If you care about the animals, actually, organic might not be the best answer because now we have organic feedlots, organic factory farms. If you care about the environment - pesticides, especially - organic is the answer.