Mexican Rice and Brothy Beans

I remember reading a funny little quote that said something to the effect that the definition of family is a group of people, no two of whom like eggs cooked in the same way. The challenge of food preference is real! I try not to be a short order cook but it happens all too often that I make something for dinner and end up fixing something different for each of the kids because they won't eat it. 

Mexican rice and beans is one of the few that we will all eat, so that's frequently on the dinner menu. This is also an example of how much I use my Instant Pot- I have two IP inserts, and with this meal, they both get used one after the other- making the rice first, and the beans second, as the latter can have a long natural release. These are also dishes that you can make in some quantity for meal-prep purposes, and my daughter will eat cheesy rice and beans in her lunchbox. She takes one of those insulated food jars. 

The beans: I forgot to soak pinto beans overnight, but a 6-hour soak in boiling water did the trick. Canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce do all the heavy lifting here as far as flavor is concerned. I followed this recipe loosely, adding a whole dried Pasilla chili too, since I happened to have some in the pantry. 

I used this recipe for the Mexican/Spanish rice, adding some mushrooms this time. And to go with the meal- a creamy cucumber and avocado salad. This is such an easy and satisfying dinner.

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A group of friends were meeting up at the botanical garden- we have boys of similar ages who were in the same daycare center years ago- and I thought of baking a snack cake to take along. With a box of ripe bananas stashed away in the freezer, I made this marbled banana cake. 

Other than cutting down the amount of sugar, I followed the recipe closely. It is different from other marbled cakes that I have made before because instead of mixing cocoa powder into a portion of the batter to make the chocolate portion, you swirl ganache into the batter. I pulled the cake out of the oven, recklessly turned it out after just 10 minutes and took it straight to the play date in a cake carrier. The warm slices of fresh-baked cake were a treat.

No pic of the cake- it was devoured quickly- but here's a picture of the bundt pan (the preciousss)- one of my prized baking tools and one that I bought at the Nordicware factory in Minneapolis. 

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Media round-up: My son asked me a surprising question: when and how did the universe begin? The question surprised me because his usual preoccupations are Pokemon and video games, and our conversations rarely involve topics of great mystery such as the birth of the universe. The other reason it surprised me was that I had been listening to a podcast episode on just this topic, so I could impress him by saying with great confidence that the universe is 13.8 billion years ago. ("I thought it would be trillions and trillions of years", he said.)

• The podcast episode I listened to was Episode 1: The First Fraction of a Second of Crash Course Pods: The Universe. It is fantastic- "We are made of big bang stuff". 
• We watched this <6 min National Geographic video on YouTube and it is such a great, succinct explanation of the Big Bang theory.
• I spotted this book on the "new books" shelf and checked it out immediately: Space Oddities by Harry Cliff. The book discusses a lot of oddities or anomalies, unexpected results that seems to contradict our accepted ideas of how the universe works and explains that they can be flukes or glitches, OR they can lift the veil on nature’s best kept secrets. I'm halfway through and not all of the chapters are equally interesting to me, but the first chapter, The Cosmic Story, is excellent! It is one of the best descriptions I have read that explain the standard model of particle physics and the standard cosmological model in simple terms. It definitely pushed along my feeble layperson understanding of these incredibly fascinating topics. 
• In non-big-bang related media, I've been trying to sink my teeth into a good fiction book but have encountered a series of duds lately. I picked up a much-recommended murder mystery, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, but it did not hold my attention and will be a DNF (did not finish.)
• We watched The Mask (1994) on Tubi- a zany and ridiculous movie but fun to watch for sure. My sister still quotes lines from this movie. 

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A Moment of Fitness: Today, I'm talking about a basic question- How much exercise do we need? Guidelines from well-respected public health agencies like the CDC and the WHO agree on exercise recommendations for healthy adults. In a nutshell, it is health-promoting to get the following in one week-

• Aerobic activity: 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity OR 75 minutes of vigorous-level activity. 
• Aerobic activities are what we know as "cardio" and include brisk walking, jogging, swimming, biking, dancing, tennis, and many others- their defining characteristic is that they get your heart rate up, and get you breathing a little harder. 
• How do you know whether your activity is moderate or vigorous? An easy way is the "talk test"- if you can talk but not sing while doing the activity, it is of moderate intensity. If you can't say more than a couple of words before getting out of breath, it is of vigorous intensity. (If you can sing while doing the activity, kindly pick up the pace :))
• 150 minutes of moderate cardio could be 30 minutes of brisk jogging/walk-run intervals/light jogging 5 days a week. Or 2 dance classes, and some walking. There are many ways to do this. 10 minutes of brisk walking after most meals will even do it! 
• If you are conditioned enough to undertake vigorous cardio like running, 75 minutes/week is very doable- a few short runs will get you there.
• Muscle-strengthening activity: at least 2 sessions a week. These can be bodyweight or weightlifting exercises. More on this in a future post. 

For adults 65+, the recommendations are to add two sessions of balance exercises in a week. An activity like yoga will cover both muscle strengthening and balance. 

Why is it important to know this? 

• You can compare your current activity to the recommended levels and see where you stand, and you can slowly ramp up your exercise to recommended levels if they're not there already. Every little bit counts. 
• For people who have some anxiety that "I feel like what I'm doing is never enough", (one of my friends said this to me verbatim), this kind of guidance provides reassurance that no, you don't need to exercise all day, every day. It is more like exercising 4-6 days of the week, 45-60 minutes per day, which is reasonable to build into one's schedule for most people. (Consider how much time we spend on our phones and on social media, as a comparator. I don't know about you but I always grimace when my weekly screen time notification pops up on my phone).
• If you're only doing cardio or only lifting weights, the recommendations are a gentle reminder to do a bit of both for optimal fitness.

Have a great week, all!