Bean Salad with Corn and Tomatoes

Well, looks like I was wrong about having no more dinner guests for a while.  I'm happy to be; I love having people over.  And now that we are mostly meatless, my husband is all the more eager to take hosting opportunities so he can grill some meat, like a man!  He invited over a colleague and his wife, who is due to have a baby this month so we figure we probably won't be seeing them much in the near future.

John and I had another one of our little discussions before our dinner, sparked by his realization that the local, grass-fed ground beef I get costs $7 a pound.  I don't mean to trivialize things; it's just that neither of us ever says anything new.  The gist is that my husband is a nostalgic person who has, for pretty much his whole life, thought of grilled burgers as a delicious and cheap meal, and he is still in mourning for the loss of that second attribute.  He believes me that cows' digestive systems aren't designed to process corn, that it makes them sick and more prone to E. coli and "superbugs" that are resistant to antibiotics, and generally fills their increasingly short lives with pain and discomfort.  And tonight his colleague, who grew up on a farm, told him that grass-fed beef contains more nutrients as well.  It's just that there was a time when we would grill burgers every weekend and think nothing of it.  (Yes, I am aware that this is the second weekend in a row we've grilled burgers! It's unusual.)

John made a point about how if we had less money, we wouldn't be able to shell out for ground beef like that.  I told him that if we had less money, I wouldn't be buying cheaper beef; I just wouldn't be buying beef.  To be clear, this is a perspective I've worked up to over the course of about two years.  When we go to a restaurant, I still try to avoid beef (and other meat), but sometimes I do have it and in those cases I'm sure it's corn-fed.  So this is not an issue about which I have any standing to be self-righteous.  Food choices are intensely personal, as my kids teach me every day.  Unfortunately, we have mostly lost our ability to make those choices based on information about how that food is produced.  The results are worsening health, environmental damage, and prolonged suffering for millions of animals, some of which are more intelligent than the dogs we keep as pets.  I can't live with that, so I'm trying to be the change I want to see in the world.  It is not easy.

It's especially not easy because I can pretty much count on my kids to eat meat when it's served to them, so that's just one more reason I like burger night: it always makes me happy when my kids eat dinner.  Tonight, Sophie ate her meat, the bun, pineapple chunks, and some strawberries that John's colleague brought for dessert.  Ben did much better, as usual: he ate his meat, his bun, pineapple chunks, some guacamole, and some cheese.  Oh, and we had chips, too... and then ice cream after that.  It was a good night for the kids.

I also made this bean salad with corn and tomatoes from allrecipes.com, recommended to me by my friend Daniela!  I didn't make it exactly as written, and I probably should have.  The dressing looked like a cilantro-lime vinaigrette that I already had made, so I just used that instead of mixing up a new one.  But this recipe calls for some sugar that I think was missing in my version.  It was still very fresh tasting, and a great substitute for that second burger I might have eaten!  Very filling, though.  I don't think the four adults even got through half of it.  I guess I know what I'm having for lunch this week.