Trying new recipes

The symptoms of (peri)menopause are many. It's almost bizarre what happens to the body in the name of reverse puberty. Like indigestion.

I have had a cast iron stomach my whole life - until now. Now I find myself experiencing GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) and heartburn. The really bad part is that it takes away the joy of eating, a joy I don't want to lose.

Enter recipes for people with gastric reflux. I tried a few I found via heartburn.about.com. Pictured here are my versions of "Cashew Vegetable Fried Rice" (above) and "Bean and Cheese Burritos with Avocado" (below).

Making the bean burrito dish required refried beans. Refried beans are not the sort of dish we ever made at home; we got it at Mexican restaurants. I've always liked them and, for a happy while here in Bergen, I found canned refried beans in the foreign food section at my local grocery store. But no more. So the question wasn't just how to make refried beans, but also what are refried beans? I found a recipe at this stranger's blog which answered both questions, and successfully made my first batch of refried beans. I used black beans, however, because I couldn't find pintos, and I don't own a potato masher (well, maybe I do, but I can't remember where I saw it last) but a food processor works just fine. I ended up with fat-free refried beans and a very tasty burrito dish. I did add a bit of taco sauce to the burritos. Just had to.

By the way, did you know that the most stable atom in the universe is iron? The principle behind both fusion and fission energy is to either fuse or split (respectively) atoms until they become iron. See, while I cook, I listen to podcasts and I highly recommend the British The Naked Scientists - "science with a sense of humor".