Special Brownies! And by 'Special,' I Mean Beans.

A few years ago, I met a slightly weird customer at my place of employment. She was a regular, so I saw her almost every day I worked. She was a middle-aged Chinese lady, and she liked to pawn off weird traditional foods on us on occasion. My theory was that she did it to butter us up so we wouldn't report her when we caught her kid not paying, but that's neither here nor there. Usually what she gave us was inedible crap, but one time she brought us something that looked like it had the potential to be appetizing. I was dating a Chinese dude at the time, so my super white-self had actually recognized the pale-white football-shaped blobs of dough: it was (probably) a pork bun.

She had given me two, one for each of the employees working that she liked. My coworker wasn't nearly as excited as I was; he didn't want to eat it because he claimed that it wasn't cooked. To appease him, I suggested that he throw them in the deep fryer for a couple minutes to give them a nice golden brown crust. Piqued, he obliged. By plopping those globs of bread and meaty filing into some hot oil, we made a lifestyle change. It was as if a light had been turned on in my trans fat-deficient life. Previously I had thought that maple syrup was the elixir of the Gods, but I was wrong. It's a hot vat of canola oil. It was now my mission to deep-fry anything and everything (and deep-fry everything we did, but that's a story for another time).

After taking a hot oil bath for two minutes, our buns were done. We laid our eyes on the bubbly brown coat the buns now donned, and braced ourselves for the delicious handful of pork we were about to consume. We were delighted by our new creation; I had improved upon something that was pretty good to begin with. This was a culinary masterpiece of the highest level: fusion food. East meets west. Pork bun meets deep fryer. We grabbed our finest plastic cutlery and placed the newly fried buns into our best paper basket and sat down before our feast.

"What's on the inside?"

"What is that?" "It's god damned beans."

Up until this point, I had just assumed this was a pork bun. I knew that steamed buns could have a myriad of fillings, and maybe I'm just an optimist, but I had assumed that the bun was half-full of pork. As much as I wanted to be able to answer to my coworker's question, I honestly couldn't.

I immediately felt a disturbance in my gut. I knew it wasn't the food, because I hadn't even eaten it yet. That was probably going to come later. No, this feeling was much worse. I was faced with the question that we've all had to ask ourselves at one point or another, "is this really pork?"

Since we weren't 100% sure what the content of the buns were, we were trepidatious about just diving in. When the bun handoff occurred, there was no mention of the type of filling. Possibly because the lady didn't really speak English, and none of us spoke Chinese. Also, we didn't ask. I quickly created a game plan in my mind. Instead of taking a bite and ending up with a mouthful of questionable meat, I would cut one in half and inspect the insides first.

So I did, and subsequently froze after taking a gander at the brownish purple sludge that was hidden inside. It was beans. Nothing but an awful clump of half-mushed beans. It was a disappointment, to say the least, but it wasn't entirely surprising either. After poking the glop of beans with my plastic knife a few times, I decided to not let our frying be for naught. I choked down one bite, but that was more than enough. I looked up from the hand of disappointment I had been dealt to see my coworker coating his half in a full packet of salt and taking a hearty bite. "They're not that bad."

A Love(handles) Story

As I jokingly tell people, I'm now on the wrong side of 25. I can no longer get away with deep-frying all of my meals, and I can't eat whatever I want without consequence. This is somewhat of a new revelation, however.

That awful discovery came when I was in Portland earlier this year. I was on vacation for a few days visiting a good friend of mine, having fun and being gluttonous. On the third day of my trip, we decided to take a break from sightseeing and berry picking to go shopping. With my XS clearance shirt selections in hand, I headed into the dressing room to disrobe. At the time, the only mirrors I had in my house were in the bathroom, fixed at shoulder height on the wall. Looking in the mirror after brushing my teeth every day, I thought my shoulders and neck looked pretty damn good. I had the shoulders and a neck of a gazelle, and I was invincible.

However, that feeling of body-positive confidence would soon be fleeting. Starting to try on the array of blouses, I took off my shirt and turned around to see a three-panel full-length mirror looming right behind me. At first I was flummoxed at how this funhouse mirror was showing me my reflection at 40. Instead of seeing my svelte-yet-curvaceous body, I saw a gelatinous white blob sullenly staring back at me. I had to stop and stare at what I had become; it was like the before picture in a Jenny Craig ad, shoulders slumped like a stick of butter half-melted in the Oregon sun. I vowed that when I got back home, I was going to look a little less like Beymax (and a little more like Beyonce?) and shed the holiday weight.

Return of the Beans: Chocolate Edition

This looks like stucco. Probably tastes similar.

Since January, the employees at my gym now actually recognize me instead of just my bank account, I can run for more than a mile without signing a death wish, and I've managed to drop seven pounds and counting. I've also signed up for my very first 5k, but that was only after finding out that participants get hot chocolate and fondue at the finish line (some things never really change).

Overall, my venture into better health and better nutrition has been mostly successful. I hardly ever eat anything deep-fried anymore, and the vast majority of my vegetables aren't sandwiched in between two hamburger buns. However, we all have our vices. Mine is anything baked, frosted, or frozen. I'm in the process of trying to wean myself off of sugar*, but it hasn't been easy. Or even successful, for that matter.

And that's where Pinterest comes in. A while ago, I stumbled upon a recipe that replaced all of the artery-clogging goodness of brownies with a can of black beans. At the time, I was disgusted, and if I'm being honest, I still am, but anything in the name of science. If it meant that I got to fill my gob with brownies and only an ounce or two or regret instead of a gallon, I'd try it.

Somehow it took a green tinge, even worse!

The recipe itself was extraordinarily simple. You basically throw a can of drained black beans, some brown sugar, cocoa powder and some other crap into a food processor and set it to annihilate. Pour it into a pan, shove it in the oven until all the demons have been exorcised, and voila, you have bean brownies.

I'd be lying to you if I told you it was a pretty process, for any of the senses. Every day I like to learn something new, and that day, I learned that canned black beans smell horrid. From the moment that the strong odor akin to cat food offended my olfactory receptors to the Pantone Baby Feces green the mixture turned whilst mixing, I was skeptical and regretful of my life choices. But there was no turning back. I had spent 99 cents on the can of beans, and I wasn't going to waste my hard-earned dollar. After mixing in all the cocoa powder, the once gray sludge had become a more familiar shade of brownie brown. Into the oven they went.

Conclusion: "They're Not That Bad."

Before trying one myself, I foisted one on my mom to test out. Her verdict was "can't tell the difference," but I didn't exactly trust the judgment of someone that subscribes to the Betty Crocker school of baking. Her palate for refined sugar isn't.. refined. So just like with the bean bun, I cautiously chiseled off a bite-sized chip from another square and forced it down my gullet. Surprisingly, she was mostly right. The texture was a bit too chewy, and it had an aftertaste that I just couldn't place, but the flavor of the unsweetened cocoa powder overpowered any of the nefarious ingredients.

I don't know what sorcery made these look edible.

Bottom line, would I choose these over regular brownies? No. But would I make these when I have a sugar craving and still want to retain a smidgeon of dignity and self-respect? No, no I wouldn't. Give me the real butter-laden thing, and I'll just run another two miles. Everything in moderation.

Since I'm such an awful person, I didn't want to be alone in my suffering, so I doled out the remaining brownies to my unsuspecting coworkers. That night, I sauntered in with my tinfoil-covered plate and urged, "who wants a brownie?" Because my coworkers are just as awful as I am, I fielded several questions of "are these special brownies?" Why yes. Yes, they are.

After indulging, nary a person told me "hey, these taste suspiciously like beans," so I'm now inclined to believe the reviews stating that you can't tell that these are chock-full of fiber. I'm not going to go as far as saying that you can't tell the difference, because that's just absurd. However, I did have several people tell me that they thoroughly enjoyed my choco-bean squares.

I should also mention that I haven't told any of my coworkers that they met, and possibly exceeded, their recommended servings of fiber the day they ate these. I professed that I'd do anything for science, but that's not entirely true. In reality, I'd do anything for entertainment. I get the feeling that they're no longer going to trust me when I bring in baked goods, but I only have one thing to say to that. Worth it.



*According to the DSM, sugar is not an addictive substance. Here is a good piece about food addiction and the farce of "detoxing" by one of my favorite fitness writers, James Fell.