Carb Week: Beans!

It’s carb week!! After 12 days with no carbs on the Two-Week Test (yes, I cut it short), I’m slowly adding carbs back one by one.

On Sunday, I started with beans! God, I missed beans. As a mostly whole foods vegan, beans are my source of protein, and without them, I had to rely on protein powder, nuts, and seeds (and the occasional Not Burger/Beyond Burger) for protein. And well, it didn’t work so well. I felt tired the whole time, and I suspect I wasn’t getting enough protein.

For my first bean-y meal, I made some Roasted Bacon-y Chickpeas (chickpeas, olive oil, vegan bacon salt, and garlic powder) in the air fryer and added them to a salad.

Honestly, I had so many salads on the Two-Week Test that I really didn’t want another, but I had one serving of salad greens left in the giant container I bought, so I didn’t want them to go to waste. The chickpeas certainly made my salad more exciting though!

I only used a half-cup of chickpeas on the salad, but I cooked the whole can. And later in the day, I snacked on the rest of them while I made dinner. So I ate a whole can of chickpeas on Sunday, and I felt great. Much better than I’d felt in days! This, to me, was proof that my body does great with legumes — lots of them.

On Monday, I put myself to another test with this super tofu-packed stir-fry. I made tofu puffs in the air fryer and sauteed with zucchini, bell pepper, onion, and green beans. I couldn’t add rice until Tuesday, so I made a plate with extra tofu. And you know what? I felt fantastic. Yay, carbs!

Monday was also fruit day, but I’ll get to that in a post tomorrow!