I don't like beans.

I also don’t like olives.

Or cilantro.

Or parsley.

Or mushrooms, unless they’re diced.

When I was a teenager, I would say “oh that’s not kosher” or “I’m allergic” as a defense. At some point in my adulthood, I started to accept that ‘picky eater’ is just a part of my identity. For a long time (including pregnancy) the healthiest meal I prepared for myself was a ‘Malka Quesadilla’. Mozzarella cheese and raw zucchini on flour tortilla, with almond butter & avocado added off the burner. 

But, I think maybe it’s time for beans?

Maybe.

I am not great in the kitchen. All my friends seem to move about the kitchen with ease. I ask them questions and monitor their movements in hopes of finding inspiration, but I just don’t get it. I try to copy their postures, but usually it's a disaster. 

One time I massaged kale for 45 minutes (instead of 4-5 min).

Another time, I made a raw cabbage salad. As in, I cut the cabbage into spinach-sized squares, threw them in a bowl, and tossed some raisins on top. 

I added Greek yogurt to a soy-cream based pasta sauce.

I forgot to add sugar to cookies.

These examples are all based on misunderstandings. On my part.

Because I didn’t understand.

Le sigh. 

I moved to Switzerland just over two years ago, and I found a magical place to live where I have learned a lot about food. In this part of the world, when you have a co-housing situation, or even just one roommate, it’s called a wg (pronounced vey-gey) which is short for wohngemeinschaft (my Rabbi calls it the “very gay” house, lol). It literally means “living together in an apartment” which is typical of the demographic of people who live in a wg.

My wg is not typical though. We’re in our thirties and forties and we live in the five hundred year old rectory of the first Protestant church in the city. We have a gorgeous garden with a view of the Rhein river and a quiet platzli with a fountain. A few hundred years ago our living room hosted a famous church reformer (Zwingli, for those interested) and out of this very living room’s window you can see the Le Trois Rois hotel where a famous photo was taken of Theodore Herzl (he stayed there during the first Zionist Congress, puh puh puh shade shade shade). We live in the center of town, which is wonderful and exciting, but can be overwhelming sometimes. However, our home is on a steep hill and it is tucked behind other famous places, which makes it peaceful most of the time. It’s really stunning.  

Even more beautiful are the people I live with, though. There are eight of us, give or take. One housemate actually lives on a farm in France but commutes two days a week and stays in the famous living room. Lately though she’s been sleeping in another housemate’s room because he has been on a farm in the valley (he’s a local ag guy who is all about biodiversity and gin and tonic-- he’s going through heartbreak right now so if you know any singles out there, hook a guy up). The land rights activist has been home more than she’s traveled, which is unusual for her, but a gift for us. She’s the one who always finishes leftover salad (even she didn’t touch the cabbage salad, which says a lot). Her boyfriend, the historian of Southern Africa, has been working on a post-doc in a tri-country/tri-university program (Botswana, Oxford, Cologne), so he’s in and out and we all miss him when he’s out. The Artist has a morning routine that is approximately two hours and includes a few pages of handwritten morning thoughts and intentional stretching (not yoga). She dances when she feels like it and she breaks out into songs or silly voices all the time. She gives crazy-wise advice and cooks for everyone (even if she’s tired from a long day of physically draining work). She has the richest spirit of any person I’ve ever met. Her boyfriend is an activist/teacher/event manager/construction worker and he’s my sweet-tooth soulmate. And, he kindly lets me take over his side of the bed every Thursday for ‘Only Murders in the Building’.

There are people from all over the world who come through our doors— among them are some regulars too, like a friend from Namibia who is a Queer/Artist/Scholar and, most recently, three Zapatistas. At the wg, we share almost everything in the house and we eat together a lot. We pick up a weekly veggie box from a local farm, and one roommate bakes bread when she’s inspired. When we buy food from the grocery store we try to buy seasonal, organic, and local. It’s great for me to have this accountability- even if it means endless root vegetables in the winter.

Another gift I’ve been given from this group is a mission to train my tastebuds to accommodate spice. I’ve had a real problem with spicy foods-- one doctor diagnosed me with supertasters, which is cool until you show up for an intimate dinner party and the lentils have chili peppers. So, the wg warns me when something is spicy and holds me accountable to at least trying it. They cater to my dislike of olives (though most of them are still shocked by this fact), but not handling spicy is just not an option. 

I love these people. Honestly, I wish I could just keep writing about them and our guests and all of our misadventures. 

But, back to beans. 

I’ve been confronted with radical ways of interacting with food since I moved here and it’s changed how I relate to the kitchen tremendously. All my friends back home laid the groundwork, but it took moving across the world, an identity crisis, and tremendous risks to dare myself to live my values. I’m less afraid to try new things, because when strangers-turned-beloved-housemates offer you a plate, you take it. 

Here’s my recipe to offer you this week:

Trust the major changes that come your way-- they might give you the healing you didn’t know you needed.

Eat the foods you love.

And learn to love the new-to-you seasonal foods when they’re in season. 

(This makes strawberries even sweeter in the summertime.)

Believe that a liberated Palestine is possible. Because if I can enjoy relatively mildly spiced foods, like table pepper, then miracles can happen.

Cook with and for your friends. Let them cook for you too. Do food together, but remember where your food comes from and who made it possible for it to be there. (The land rights’ activist has sort of ruined my life in an important way— did you know that most people who grow our food are enslaved and that the globalization of food is horrendously horrible for our environment? I knew it before, but now I know it-know it.)

And finally, remember that a bean needs time to soften before being served. 

Submit your bean related essays, thoughts, conspiracies, or poems and pair with a (plant based) recipe…or not. Selected pieces will be published on Frank Substack; authors will receive our deepest gratitude, praise, accolades, and a bag of beans.