Vegetarian dinner, Beans and rice

On Mondays we here at Casa Bruja en Bici eat vegetarian, because #1 I have to cook, and #2 I’m Damned Cheap. Family joke is my Father and I squeeze a penny so hard Lincoln lets out a muttered squeak. So since the wife cleans the church on Mondays after she gets off work, I get to cook and I get to cook what I like. I like a vaguely Cajun style beans and rice dish that I have played with since I started having to spend time at home after the wreck. I use a slow-cooker now because the rice used to scorch and stick to the pot when I was using the stove top method before.

Anyways, the recipe:

2/3 cup each of dried lentils, black beans, and small red beans

10 cups of water

Salt, black pepper, red or cayenne pepper, garlic powder

1 cup brown rice

I know complex, too many ingredients to remember, right 😛

Put the beans in a slow cooker on high heat, pour water over the beans, and simmer for 4 hours, stirring ever 45-30 minutes to ensure even cooking. Add spices to taste (I use 1 tsp each with the salt being a heaping spoon and the peppers being level or slightly scant) and let cook about a half hour longer, then add the brown rice and let cook for at least another hour on high, depending on how thick the bran is on your rice you might have to go as much as 2 hours between adding the rice and serving.

Serves 4 with a salad.

Now if the nutritional information on the bean and rice packages are right each serving should contain 384 Calories, 27 from fat, 24 grams of dietary fiber, 16 grams of complete protein (meat equivalent), and 79 grams of carbs but only 4 of those would be sugars.

I worked up this recipe for a planned trip to Nevada to watch the Human Powered Speed Championships at Battle Mountain, but that trip got KO’ed at the last minute when the guy that was sponsoring the trip got forced out of his business leaving me all dressed up with no money for food there and back 😦 Anyway, I can ride all day on a pot of this, so long as I ride by myself. My on-the-road version was a double serving from the pots I had in my cooking kit, plus on the road I turned half of a 24 oz, loaf of bread and 6 oz of peanut butter and some honey into sandwiches that I would eat while I rode. I road-tested this on a short trip south of here that averaged about 150 miles a day, until the skin rubbed off my tailbone over the callous where I broke it in college…

PSA, Opus

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Something interesting happened while riding yesterday, and the Feed

I had something strange/interesting happen while I was out riding yesterday. As most of you know I publish this blog under a pseudonym, Opus the Poet. While I don’t make a secret of that around my town, I don’t actively promote it either. I only mention it when it’s pertinent to what I’m doing at the moment, like when I’m attending a BPAC meeting at NCTCOG, or when someone on the City Council asks what I do when I’m not lecturing them about bicycle infrastructure. Well when I was out riding yesterday I was greeted by a young man riding a BMX bicycle (on the sidewalk, against the flow of traffic) with “Hello, Opus.” Since I don’t know this young man from Adam, I can only assume that at least one person in my neighborhood reads my blog. Well I can’t say that, because if he read my blog he would have been on the other side of the street riding with the flow of traffic, so he’s aware of my blog, but not fully on board with the content.

Up first we have from Houston 2 links about a wreck I was told about in comments on another post here. This was a hit-from-behind wreck. Pickup truck hits bicycle, killing 1 on Eldridge and the police report Traffic News Release OK the rider was on the shoulder of the road and hit from behind by someone driving a pickup truck. Google shows this to be a wide road with a wide shoulder and lots of runoff room. Comments that went with the article indicate the speed limit in the area is 30 MPH so there should have been plenty of time for the rider to react had the driver actually been doing the speed limit, but other comments said that drivers doing the limit there tend to get run over by the majority of speeding drivers doing 50-60 MPH, and also that the road is part of a bike route that is in common use throughout the week. So this looks like a speeding driver that couldn’t stay on the road hitting a cyclist from behind.

Moving a little further away from WoaB World HQ, we find the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bicycle continues to live down to its reputation. Fort Myers bicyclist dies after being struck by vehicle on Sanibel Causeway From what I can tell from the article the cyclist was hit head-on by a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road and knocked over the guardrail into the water where she drowned. This is not the kind of wreck that a cyclist can avoid, unless the cyclist is either Kreskin or the Flash, and if you’re the Flash why would you ride a bicycle? According to canon the Flash can run multiple laps around the world at supersonic speed without even breathing hard. And yes, I used to be (?) a comic geek.

A pickup truck violated the right of way of a cyclist and the cyclist died. Deputies: Cyclist killed in Pasco wreck That’s another death in the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike, but at least this time the cyclist managed to get a little damage in on the driver before expiring. This is another of those wrecks that a cyclist just can’t do anything to avoid, you can’t predict or prepare for a vehicle pulling in front of you like a moving wall.

A door prize in Canada. Car door leaves cyclist critically injured and Cyclist critically injured after car door opened Since it is mentioned so prominently I’m going to say the cyclist might have been better off had he been wearing a helmet. There, I said it, this was a wreck where wearing a helmet probably would have made a difference. What would definitely have made a difference would have been riding outside the door zone, or the driver watching and not throwing the door into the cyclist’s path.

If you think cycling in FL is bad, apparently Abu Dhabi is much worse. Abu Dhabi Cyclists Are A Riding Target If I’m reading this right, drivers in Abu Dhabi are using their vehicles as weapons against cyclists… with no other place for cyclists to ride besides in the streets and roads with motor vehicles.

The UK equivalent of ROTC trains for a ride around the UK for charity. Cambridge University’s endurance cyclist team convenes If you live in the UK this looks to be a worthy charity to support.

And finally a support group for victims of wrecks in the Windy City. In support group, crash victims don’t ride alone I could have used such a group when I was hit in 2001.

And that’s all I have for you today.

Billed @$0.02, Opus