Here is my recipe - I make this every Sunday, divide it up into 5 tupperwares, and bring it for my lunch at work each day. I call it “Beans and Greens”. This amount is what I do for a week. If you are less hungry than me you can adjust the portion accordingly. I like this because its easy to make, filling, healthy, and the total cost for a week is ≈ $10.
“Beans” Component:
• Ingredients: You can use whatever you like, but I usually use: ¾ cup each of chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans, and black-eyed beans (3 cups beans total), plus 1.5 cups green lentils, and 1 cup quinoa.
• Make all of the above as per the instructions on the package. The package will say to soak overnight in water (except the quinoa, don’t need to soak quinoa), I recommend doing this, it makes them way better. Don’t need to do overnight but at least 3-4 hours soaking.
• I make the lentils and quinoa together in 1 pot, and all the beans together in another pot. The chickpeas take longer, put them on first, then add the other beans after 15-20 mins. Same with the lentils, bring them to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes, then add the quinoa.
• You can make them all plain, but to make it tastier you can add: minced garlic, ginger or chilis, butter, soy sauce, salt, chicken stock etc. The beans don’t absorb much flavor but the quinoa does, I usually add all of those to my quinoa/lentil pot as its cooking. Usually the only thing I add to the beans is salt and butter at the end after I drain the water.
• Once it’s all done drain any excess water, cool, and then dish out into the bottom of your tupperware
“Greens” Compoonent:
• Ingredients: 2 large or 3 medium broccoli crowns, 1 head bok-choy, plus garlic, ginger and chilis. (I used to use Kale as well but I stopped because it takes too long to clean it and cut it up.)
• Put some oil in a wok or large pan and turn it to 7/10 heat level
• Cut up the broccoli and throw it in (if you use Kale add it first, a couple minutes before the broccoli, it takes longer)
• Mince up some garlic, ginger and chilis and throw them in at the same time as the broccoli
• Cut up the bok choy, and throw it in once the broccoli is about 50% done (after about 5-6 minutes on 7/10 heat)
• Once the greens are about 80% done (3-4 minutes after adding the bok-choy) add the sauce
o Sauce : in a 1L measuring cup put 1 cup warm water, 2 spoonfuls flour, 1 tbspn chicken stock powder, lots of salt, a few squirts of fish sauce, hoisin, and hot sauce, and about 1/3 cup soy sauce. Stir it up with a spoon until it is all mixed and the flour is completely absorbed
• Add the sauce to the pan, then stir it all together so the sauce coats all the veggies. If it is too thick add some water.
• Once it’s done let it cool then put into the Tupperware on top of the beans. Be careful not to overcook, both broccoli and bok choy can get mushy really easily. I usually remove the pan from the burner when its about 90% done (still a bit crunchy) and then it cooks the remaining 10% as it cools from the heat of the pan. Of course depends how you like it; I like the broccoli and bokchoy to be a little bit crunchy but still soft. Mushy = bad.