Every few weeks I try to find a new food to expand in my diet while reducing others out. It provides variety, a chance to improve on certain nutrients and vitamins and learn what makes sense for me to cook and eat.

Beans are the latest thing I’ve been experimenting with boosting in my diet. Beans are nitrogen fixing legumes, they are healthy both for the soil and humans that eat them. They do have kind of a bad reputation for making people gassy, though some of that is due to people’s digestion tract trying to adjust to a more fiber rich diet.

The process of cooking dried beans at first was a bit off putting with my busy schedule. Who has time these days to spend hours sitting around waiting for beans to simmer on the stove? But it turns out it’s easy to soak beans in the refrigerator a day in advance – not a lot of work – then if I start the beans early, go back to bed, then turn off the stove while walking then turn it back on when I eat breakfast and shower they’re done before I head to work. And then I put them in the refrigerator or freezer for the week to come. It’s a one shot deal for a week full of the goodness of beans.

For the past few months I’ve been consuming a half pound of beans a week. Different types every other week – black beans, white beans, pinto beans and cranberry beans. Red beans are next on my list to add to my diet. They are supposedly more flavorful and nutritious. Variety is important.

Beans often are somewhat calorie heavy due to the carbohydrates and to a lesser extent fats. But the flip side is the same things in beans that make you fart can make them quite filling with smaller portion sizes. If you aren’t hungry, you won’t be stuffing as much food in your mouth.

That said, with all the health benefits of eating beans, I’m thinking of boosting up to one pound in the coming week, use whole package and refrigerate or freeze the remaining. If I have too many, I can always freeze and save for next week.