Are you eating enough protein?
Because I haven't... bean…
Some notes: I published The Lasagna of Sadness as a YouTube video, which is a shorter, 4-minute long version of the story. I think it’s the best video I’ve made yet! If you’re local to me, you can now buy the printed book at The Yeti Cafe.
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I have had a bag of dried black chickpeas from Rancho Gordo sitting on my counter for a week. I took them out of my pantry to remind me to cook them. I like beans and I need the protein in my diet.
I’ve been meaning to cook them. I’ve never made black chickpeas before, I want to see what they’re like. How will they cook? What will the hummus be like? Are they fancy, or are they quality?
But it’s been a week and every night I’ve walked past them wondering why I don’t just get out a bowl of water and start soaking them so I can cook them the next day. I know you don’t have to soak beans, or even soak them overnight. I know lots of people make them from dry in an Instant Pot, but I like to make food the slow old fashioned way. (I finally made them after writing this and they were great.)
I’ve felt so busy lately, mostly due to my own irrationally high expectations of myself. I‘ve been obsessing over metrics I don’t control when I should be focusing on my impact, which I can. Instead of feeling good and making beans, I am feeling down and I end up getting pizza or making a sandwich. Pizza is not a high protein meal and I end up hungry, so I eat.
I’m trying to catch myself doing this, because I spent the last 3 years being so busy I couldn’t be thoughtful about what I ate. I jokingly called it #PizzaDiet2020, but 2020 was three years long.
The bag of beans on the counter is a new technique I’m trying. I have to notice them, which means I might only let the beans sit on the counter, too busy, for a few days – instead of a few weeks, months, or years. It’s hard when you’re in a busy time to stop. It’s hard to eat what you intend to instead of what is easy.
And what I’ve learned is that is very hard to eat enough protein.
Cooking as a stress response
This month is my birthday (37 on Friday!) and three years since the first COVID-19 lockdowns. It seems impossible that it’s been that long. Those early days of stress, anxiety, and loneliness are as close as yesterday, as far as the distant past, and so weird they feel imagined.
I live alone. In lockdown I was bored. I was stressed. My stress response is to cook and to bake. To be busy. When everyone made sourdough bread, I started making sourdough croissants. Every weekend. I always wanted to learn how to make good croissants and there is nothing like a 3-day baking project to make you forget your total lack of human contact. I don’t think I mastered the technique of making them by hand, and I still dream of getting a laminating machine, but I got pretty good at making croissants with a rolling pin. Once I figured out croissants, I began to look at everything you can make with laminated pastry dough.
I learned to make Danish, Kougin Amann, cardamom knots, and then morning buns. Morning buns became everyone’s favourite. I would leave them on my porch for friends and my employees to pick up – no contact. We would shout at each other through my storm door, still wearing masks with a pane of glass between us. My more anxious friends would leave a message on my doorbell. This was when people would Lysol their groceries. It was a weird time.
In 2020 I was the CEO of a tech startup. I tried to keep my team engaged as we moved remote. We had Zoom social meetings, which usually ended in awkward silence, everyone looking into each others eyes (but really at their own thumbnail) and wondering if this was real life now. I wanted my team to have fun, to stay active, so I bought everyone an Apple Watch. I wanted to model the right behaviour so I ramped up my own running. I got new running shoes, because online shopping is also one of my stress responses. For anyone who is a runner you already know how this ends.
The new shoes were a mistake.
In the Before Times, I would run 2–3 half marathons every year. In 2019 I completed Around The Bay 30k (my longest race, I have yet to run a full marathon, never making the space for training). Running has been a core part of my personal identity and health since highschool.
In April 2020, only a few hundred meters from my house, I tore something in my ankle. I heard something snap loud enough to hear through my headphones while Dua Lipa told me I should have stayed at home. I screamed. I fell to the ground and a few cars pulled over to help. A woman came over to help me.
“I’m a nurse” she said.
“Anyone but you…” I thought. “I’m fine!” I said.
This was only a few weeks into lockdown and the closest anyone wanted to be to a health care worker was banging on pots and pans from their window to show their support. It was a weird time.
The nurse offered to take me to the hospital (“Anywhere but there…” I thought). I declined, pretending I was fine from six feet away. Instead of going to the hospital I called my dad. He kept me company on the phone while I hopped home on one foot.
Downhill.
What is normally a 3 minute walk took me 20 minutes. I called my neighbour who dropped off a tensor bandage on my porch in exchange for morning buns. One of my colleagues left crutches on my porch in exchange for croissants. Porches were a very helpful thing to have in the pandemic. Morning buns and croissants were currency, to be traded for toilet paper. I wish that was a joke. It was a weird time.
I didn’t go to the hospital even though my foot was black-and-blue and the size of an elephant’s. I had done the same thing to my other ankle in 2010 (also with new shoes). That time I had to hop from the train tracks at the back of Victoria Park to Park Street. That time I did go to the hospital and there wasn’t anything they could do. Performative x-rays. Rest, ice, compression, elevation.
But I am not good at rest. The croissant dough needed rest, ice, compression, and elevation. Why should my needs come before pastry?
Bored, alone, and on crutches, I should have been watching Tiger King with everyone else. Instead I moved a dining chair into my kitchen. I put one knee up on the chair so I could stand in front of my kitchen island and roll out pastry dough. I stubbornly hopped to the fridge and back, every hour as the recipe required, like some kind of unkempt version of Tigger.
After a few months of this I began to look less like Joel Miller and more like Severus Snape.
Most of my family members are or have been obese (both of my sisters have had bariatric surgery). Until the pandemic I managed to stay relatively lean. I walked to work every day for 10 years (uphill, both ways, in the snow). I no longer walk to work, I only walk to the fridge.
For my entire adult life, until 2020, I stayed around 185lbs (I’m 6’1). Currently I am around 260lbs, which some people refuse to believe, but I’ve tried three different scales and they all agree with each other and not with you.
I’ve tried everything to get back to my old weight.
When my ankle healed enough to bear weight I bought a rowing machine as my low-impact workout. I loved rowing with virtual studio classes, but iFit had a lack of them and it got repetitive after I completed all of those. In November 2020 I joined the cult of Peloton, which I love dearly. I Peloton’d my little heart out with 4,000km of riding in 2021 and the same in 2022. I bought an outdoor bike, a Norco Section, and did a few century rides with my friends. I bought weights and did Peloton’s Total Strength 1 and 2 (twice!). I ripped out my kitchen, I ripped out my floors, I ripped out my ceilings.
But I did not get ripped. The scale only went up through all of this.
Weight isn’t the only metric that matters – there are objective metrics in your bloodwork as well, and health is also about how you feel emotionally and psychologically, your energy levels, your productivity, your capacity for joy and humour. Whether you fit in your nice pants (I don’t).
All of my metrics were going in the wrong direction. Part of this was croissants, sure. But I think a large part of my struggle was The Stress.
In late 2020 I sold my tech company. In 2021 my new job had seventeen Zoom meetings per day and I was renovating my house. In 2022 I worked at a startup and started my YouTube channel and my dad had surgery and I was still renovating my house. My kitchen reno, which should have taken 6 months took 18 months. They dropped my oven on my staircase during delivery, shattering it. I’m still not ready to talk about it – I lived with only a mini fridge, toaster oven, hot plate, and utility sink for 9 months. I never want to see how much I spent on takeout. I never want to live through that again.
And this is how #PizzaDiet2020 became #PizzaDiet2021 and #PizzaDiet2022. For 3 years everything in my life was on fire. Nobody died, which I’m grateful for, but it was a no good very bad time.
Now things are settled. My kitchen is done, I only have one job (writing this newsletter), and COVID will be with us forever – so the most I can do is keep getting my vaccines and avoiding my friends when they are sick.
Heavy topics
Discussing weight gain and weight loss is tricky. Everyone has a different relationship with their body and with food. I learned that it is very difficult to prioritize my health when everything else is on fire, since I quickly run out of willpower when everything goes wrong every day.
I’ve found most diets are framed around denying yourself – denying calories, denying fats, denying sugar, denying gluten, denying potatoes while allowing sweet potatoes (which doesn’t even make sense scientifically). Constantly denying yourself takes a tremendous amount of mental effort. Shaming yourself is unsustainable in the long term, with a large cost to your mental health and relationships. This is why most people, myself included, end up yo-yoing on the scale when trying these tactics.
At some point I had to accept that I need to buy XL and XXL shirts. At some point I gave away anything medium and large. I don’t think gaining weight makes me any less of a person and I’m not letting it hold me back from life. I’m still putting myself out there in the world, on camera.
This isn’t a problem with how I look, this is a problem with how I feel. This isn’t what the first 34 years of my body were like and it’s frustrating that everything I’ve tried over the last 3 years seems to fail.
I tried CICO for 3 months, but that actually made me gain weight very quickly, like my body was holding onto everything for a long winter. I tried logging everything in every app, which is very hard to do when you cook most of your own food – you need to tediously add every ingredient. I tried (and continue) weight training. I tried Zone 2 heart rate cardio. I tried a juice cleanse, I tried a nutritionist approved elimination diet, I tried Noom. I had my thyroid checked and that was a problem – it turns out that by switching to kosher salt years ago I created an iodine deficiency (your iodine might vary, ask your doctor).
Weight loss advice, for me, often feels like a shame spiral: if only I did a better job tracking every calorie of every meal, if only I eliminated this arbitrary set of foods that someone said are bad on a podcast, if only I did meal planning for my macros and never had a cookie again. If only I was a chicken breast gay. None of it is helpful. I do not want to allocate the mental space for this. I never had to allocate space for this before. It is not good for my mental health.
Recently though I got advice that is working. I talked to a friend, who is a nutritionist, and her only question was “Are you eating enough protein?”
She wasn’t shaming me about my diet or calories or asking me how often I’m eating from the fridge at midnight, wearing my bedsheet as my snacking cape. She was not suggesting a fad diet. She was not suggesting I take things away or add unimaginable cognitive overhead of tracking macros and logging all of my food in an app.
She just had one question for me to ask every meal.
“Are you eating enough protein?”
I find the question so powerful, because so much weight loss advice centers around restrictions. This question is about eating more.
And it turns out I have not been eating enough protein. Not by a long shot.
A good goal for most people is 30 grams of protein per meal (plus snacks), which will get you to 90–150g of protein per day.
If you want more tailored recommendations:
The FDA recommends a minimum of 50g/protein per day.
The EFSA (Europe) and the WHO recommend 0.8g of protein per 1kg of body weight (0.36g per lb) per day, which for me would be 94g of protein per day.
Fitness people provide a broad range, but a few different meta analysis studies say 1.62g per kg of body weight is the optimal amount if you are active and trying to change your body composition – for me that’s around 187g of protein per day.
Deeper into fitness science they recommend using lean body mass for the calculation, which mitigates how obesity impacts the numbers, but it’s hard to calculate. An easier number they suggest 1g of protein per 1cm of height – for me that’s 185g of protein per day, which aligns to the number above.
Most days I was barely meeting the FDA’s minimum requirement, I was never meeting the WHO’s guideline, and I was certainly not following modern fitness science despite all of the fitness work I’ve been putting in.
When I was selling my company, when I was doing seventeen Zoom meetings a day, and when I didn’t have a kitchen, most of my days were like this. I still have days like this. We all have days like this:
Breakfast: Pancakes – 6g protein
Lunch: Sandwich (1/2 baguette, mixed deli meats) – 16g protein
Snack 1: Almond croissant – 8g protein
Dinner: Pepperoni pizza – 24g protein (if you eat a lot of pizza)
Snack 2: Chips – 0g
54g of protein for the day, which is barely above the minimum recommended amount, half the WHO’s guidance and a third of what’s recommended for my height and activity level!
I was eating is a lot of food but I was still hungry. This meal plan was a recipe for eating cold pizza from the fridge in the middle of the night in my snacking cape. Despite blowing my calorie budget I was hungry all the time.
These days I have more space to focus on what I’m eating. I’m asking myself “How much protein am I eating with this meal? Am I eating enough?”
Breakfast: Oatmeal with nuts and seeds – 26g
Lunch: Brussels sprout Caesar salad with 3 jammy eggs – 24g
Snack 1: Granola (with nuts and seeds) and Greek yogurt – 18g
Dinner: Roasted cabbage with crumbled feta and walnuts – 21g
Snack 2: Hummus and veggies – 10g
This is a plant-forward diet, but it has twice as much protein – 99g! – as my beloved #pizzadiet2020. This is just above WHO’s recommended amount, but only half of my goal based on my level of activity. I could eat a chicken breast for 55g of protein, but I don’t want to eat a chicken breast every day. I can’t afford it. The planet can’t afford it. And sadly a more delicious chicken thigh only has 13g of protein.
In February I finished Total Strength 1 again and I’m starting Total Strength 2 next week. Both are progressive overload weight training programs. So for the last few weeks I’ve been focused on closing the gap in my protein intake to make the most of the work I’m putting in.
Most days that means having two protein shakes (30g protein each) – one in the morning, one at night. The simple act of adding two protein shakes every day has made me feel so much more in control of my food cravings more than any other change I’ve made or any cleanse I’ve done before. I am no longer tearing through the kitchen looking for snacks.
I’m not hungry all the time. I am full all the time.
I am full because protein takes a long time to digest. I am full because my body has what it needs. And I feel better, psychologically, because I’ve flipped the script on internal dialogue. I’m not laying awake at midnight thinking “I want to eat… but I shouldn’t, I’m not allowed to… but I want to…”/
Instead I’m thinking “I am so full but I still need 15g more protein, but I can’t possibly eat more peanut butter. I am so full.”
Meeting the protein bar
The protein industry can be pretty gross when it comes to ingredient quality and additives. I avoid a lot of products for those reasons. Here’s a few of the foods I’ve been using to meet my protein goal, but I’d love to hear in the comments what your favourites are.
Powder
I buy SunWarrior Warrior Blend protein (natural flavour, which has no additives – the flavours do, and basically every protein powder out there has gums added for a creamy mouthfeel). 23g per shake, 2 shakes per day.
I also add collagen for another 10g of protein in each shake.
Bone broth
I buy Beck’s Broth, which is made locally in Kitchener and ships across Ontario. Beck makes a hot chocolate flavour, which literally tastes like chocolate milk (15g sugar from honey) and a coffee flavour (made with cold brew coffee, no added sugar). 15g of protein per jar.
Granola and yogurt
What’s really helped me meet my protein goal is granola. There is nothing faster to eat when you are tired and hungry than granola on yogurt. Granola can save you when you are hangry. You will put the phone down mid-way through ordering pizza and realize you can make an omelette instead. That is the power of granola.
Granola with yogurt can be a great high protein food. And home-made granola tastes way better than what you get at the store. I find it helps with my sweet tooth, too. With right recipe granola can taste like your favourite dessert, but be way better for you. It’s a win win, not a compromise.
You will recall how much I love morning buns – we can all agree they are not a healthy breakfast. And they became the first dessert flavour I turned into granola.
Here is how they compare:
Morning Bun
510 calories, 27g fat, 28g sugar, 6g protein
Morning Bun Inspired Granola on Greek Yogurt
247 calories, 12g sugar, 18g protein
The granola version has half the calories, half the fat, half the sugar, three times the protein, but it still hits that same flavour profile and dessert craving. This isn’t a mediocre dessert replacement. This is extremely tasty.
I want to eat it.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for desserts (such as in next week’s newsletter) – but for me that means smaller sizes and less often. I want a donut from Lucero every day, but I can happily get my dessert dopamine from granola instead. The morning bun granola is one of the best recipes I’ve ever developed. The joy I get from my friends reactions to eating it has led me down a very fun rabbit hole.
It is so good that I decided to take all of my favourite dessert recipes and turn them into granola recipes. It’s been so much fun. It’s also very affordable. If you buy conventional ingredients, you can make 1kg (2lbs, 15 servings of 1/2 cup each) of granola for $5. Make it with organic ingredients for $10–15.
It’s one bowl, one pan, 5 minutes of effort and 25 minutes of baking.
And it tastes way better than anything at the store.
I’ve put together some base recipes you can riff on. They use different mixing techniques for different types of ingredients and I’ve included variations I’ve tried within each base recipe. I’ve also included a section on how to buy quality oats and how to choose the right nuts and seeds if you’re looking to maximize protein vs flavour.
Read on for base granola, morning bun granola, and Oreo-inspired granola. I’ve tried to keep these high protein and below 7g of added sugar per serving. I find these recipes sweet enough, but if you try the recipe and want more sweetness you can add 50% more sugar without needing to change the recipe.
Base granola:
Place 500g of old fashioned oats in a large bowl
Add 100g of fat (melted butter, olive oil, or coconut oil depending on your flavour goals)
Add 100g of sugar (maple, honey, brown sugar, cane sugar – remember this is 15 servings, so that’s only 6.7g of added sugar per 1/2 cup serving, which is relatively low. Maple and honey are inherently sweeter than cane sugar).
Add spices that you love
Mix everything together
To increase protein (and delight) you can add:
150–250g of nuts
Up to 150g of seeds
When you’ve stirred everything to combine:
Spread in an even layer on a baking sheet
Bake for 25 minutes at 325F, stirring halfway through, until very golden brown
Stir again after removing from the oven to help release steam
Cool, then optionally add 150g of any extras you want like dried fruit and store in a large glass container
It’s pretty easy to customize. If you are vegan or dairy-free, use olive oil or coconut oil instead of butter.
For me, though, the trick is figuring out how to make granola high protein and tasty, so it is both filling and tricks me into thinking I’ve closed my Desserts Ring for the day.
Protein by nut, per 100g
Peanuts – 26g
Almonds – 21g
Pistachio – 20g
Cashews – 18g
Hazelnuts – 15g
Walnuts – 15g
Pecans – 9g
Macadamia – 8g
Protein by seed, per 100g:
Pumpkin (pepitas) – 30g
Hemp – 30g
Sunflower – 21g
Flax – 18g
Poppy – 18g
Sesame – 18g
Chia – 17g
Optional add-ins for sweetness:
For add-ins, please read the ingredient labels when you buy them. You’ll be very surprised by what gets added to fruit. Dried fruit is all over the map nutritionally, and frankly dark chocolate is better for you. You’ll be happier adding fresh or frozen fruit to your yogurt.
Facts per 100g:
Dried cherries – 36g sugar, 9g fiber, no protein
Raisins – 59g sugar, 3g fiber, no protein
Chopped dark chocolate – 24g sugar, 11g fiber, 8g protein
Chopped milk chocolate – 52g sugar, 3g fiber, 8g protein
On Chocolate
If you want to add chocolate, it’s a great addition. Often it has less sugar than dried fruit. I suggest buying a chocolate bar you like eating and chop it, instead of buying chocolate chips. Chocolate chips are usually formulated to keep their shape after melting, so they have less cocoa butter, more soy lecithin (a chemically derived emulsifier), and more sugar. They don’t taste great.
Please don’t buy cheap chocolate, as it can be high in heavy metals and slave labour. Look for locally made bean-to-bar brands (who don’t use lecithin!) and widely available slave-free brands like Tony’s Chocolonely (made with lecithin, but nearly all chocolate is). I know learning about the supply chain of the food system is not fun, but change starts with being aware of the problem. You can choose how to spend your own money with your new knowledge and ingredient reading powers. You may want to avoid Hershey, Nestle, Lindt, Govida, and Ferrero.
Buying the right kind of oats
When you buy oats there are many kinds. You want old fashioned oats.
Instant Oats – Very thin and dusty, don’t use these they will burn
Quick Oats – Thin, don’t use these they will burn
Old Fashioned Oats – Perfect
Thick rolled oats – These are twice as thick as old fashioned oats meaning they will absorb more fat and take longer to cook, so the recipes will behave erratically and other ingredients like nuts may burn before the oats become golden, not ideal
Steel cut oats – These will fail as granola
I strongly recommend buying organic oats if you can afford them and have access to them. Oak Manor organic oats are grown and milled local to me (“oat flakes” are what you want from them). Bob’s Red Mill Old Fashioned Organic Oats are also great and available across North America.
Things to put granola on
Yogurt is an obvious choice for granola, but you can also add it to cottage cheese or ricotta. You can put it on cooked squash or sweet potato. Allegedly you can make a savoury granola to garnish your salad with, but I ran out of time in writing this to test that theory.
Please read the ingredients on your yogurt. Yogurt has a very divergent amount of protein per serving depending on type as well. Eby Manor Balkan Style is easiest for me to find so I buy that most often.
Plant-based yogurt and kefir is complicated. Like many plant-based replacements of animal products, they tend to have chemical thickeners to replicate a texture and/or are missing protein. Coconut kefir, while delicious, has no protein. Home-made coconut yogurt has 5g of protein, but it also has 550 calories due to the fat in coconut milk. Some store-bought vegan yogurts are enriched with aquafaba and pea protein, which helps them thin out the fat in coconut milk. If you are plant-based and looking at your protein intake you need to read the nutrition facts on every processed you buy. You will be disappointed.
Instead, buy (or make) good milk from soy, almonds, or cashews, which are high in protein – you can pour that on granola. Elmhurst almond milk has 5g of protein in 1 cup, which is more than some dairy yogurts. You can also make your own vegan yogurt with quality nut milks, but I haven’t tried this so I can only point you to Google.
Morning Bun Granola
500g old fashioned oats
100g butter, melted (optionally: brown the butter, olive oil also works great)
100g maple syrup
200g pecans
3g | 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
Zest of 2 oranges
100g raisins (optional, add after baking)
In a large bowl add your oats and set aside. In a medium bowl or measuring glass, add the melted butter, maple syrup, spices, and orange zest into a container to combine. Pour the butter/maple mixture on top of the granola and toss to combine. Add the nuts, toss again, then pour onto a baking sheet.
Bake at 325°F for 25 minutes, mixing after about 10 minutes to release steam and re-distribute the oats.
After it cools add the raisins. Do not bake the raisins. I don’t know why I tried baking the raisins but I did that three times.
Follow this technique for most dessert-inspired granolas like…
Baklava: pistachios, butter, honey, 1 tbsp rose water, 1 tbsp cinnamon, zest of 2 oranges
Carrot cake: chopped walnuts, butter, brown sugar, 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, 1/4 tsp allspice or clove, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, zest of 2 lemons (add sunflower seeds for extra protein or dried pineapple if you’re one of those people)
Coconut cream pie: unsweetened shredded coconut, virgin coconut oil, cane sugar, and zest of 2–3 limes (optional slivered almonds for added protein)
Lemon poppyseed loaf: 50g poppyseeds, neutral oil (like grapeseed), cane sugar, zest of 3 lemons, juice of 1 lemon (optionally add a nut or seed of your choice for additional protein)
Pumpkin pie spice: pepitas (pumpkin seeds), butter, maple syrup, 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp clove (serve on roasted/mashed pumpkin with some maple syrup!)
Gingerbread: butter, molasses, 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp clove (optionally add a nut or seed of your choice for additional protein)
Oreo-inspired Granola
The mixing technique is different here. The first time I made this I followed my normal technique, but the cocoa powder will absorb all of the butter and make little chunks of cocoa, which taste good, but not what you want here.
Oreos get their colour and flavour from black cocoa. Black cocoa is made by heavily alkalizing it (generally with potassium carbonate), which makes it very dark and very sweet. A little bit of black cocoa goes a long way. When paired with yogurt this really tastes like Oreos. Black cocoa doesn’t have a lot of other uses in the kitchen, but it is really good sprinkled on a latte.
Regular Dutch processed cocoa (alkalized cocoa, medium brown colour) won’t taste like Oreos, it will taste like chocolate. Black cocoa is black.
Ingredients:
500g oats
100g butter, melted
100g cane sugar
50g black cocoa
Optionally you could add any kind of nut, I really like macadamia nuts here, but if you are an Oreo purist you can leave them out
Mix the oats and butter in a large bowl to coat the oats. Add the sugar and toss to combine. Add the cocoa and toss to combine. It’s very important to do this sequentially, because you want the oats to absorb the butter, which will then help the cocoa and sugar adhere to the oats and the oats to brown. If you add everything at once the cocoa will absorb all of the butter before you can blink.
You can swap the butter with a neutral oil, like grapeseed oil. Optionally swap 25% of the butter or oil with virgin coconut oil (the kind that tastes like coconut) for a superb flavour.
Bake at 325°F for 25 minutes, mixing after about 10 minutes to release steam and re-distribute the oats. These oats will not get as brown as the technique above but they will still be delightfully crisp.
You can use this same technique with regular cocoa, which will taste more like regular chocolate… such as in…
Ferrero Roche-inspired Granola
500g oats
100g butter, melted
100g cane sugar
50g cocoa powder
200g whole or roughly chopped hazelnuts
100g good dark chocolate, chopped (added after baking)
Follow the steps above, adding the nuts before baking. Cool fully before adding the chocolate.
Context: I associate Rancho Gordo beans with you and I thought you would be as outraged as I am about this development, lol. Also, I shouldn’t comment at 11 pm, sorry about that
😭 they don’t ship the book Fagioli: The Bean Cuisine of Italy, to Canada