Inspired by a recipe in Miranda Gardiner's Teaching Dad to Cook Flapjack - a simple bean salad tossed with lots of toasted almonds, fresh thyme, and an assertive honey-balsamic dressing.

A soup I made for a camping trip to the Sonoma coast - lots of beans, vegetables, and stellette pasta. Tiny stars under the stars, with a good dollop of pistou for each bowl.

Love these - white beans pan-fried until they're golden, with kale, Parmesan, lemon, walnuts, and nutmeg.

I made a big pot of farro & bean stew for my mom and dad the other night - simple, hearty, and straightforward. The stew has farro, beans, lots of vegetables, and a generous dusting of cheese to top each bowl.

An impromptu freezer cleaning inspired this huge pot of ribollita. It's a thick Tuscan stew - dark greens, lots of beans, vegetables, olive oil, thickened with day-old bread.

This is simply heirloom beans and roasted broccoli with shallots and pan-fried seitan. Something I threw together one night after getting home from the airport. It's filling and hearty, and quick to make - particularly if you have cooked beans stashed in the freezer...but canned beans will work too.

I made these cookies for Wayne to eat when he finished the San Francisco Marathon. The batter is made with pureed white beans, lots of oats, and whole wheat flour. The resulting cookies are sesame coated and flavored with aniseed, lemon zest, olive oil and chopped dates. They are beautifully tender, licorice-scented, with a bit of crunch from the sesame seed coating.

Warm, coin-shaped slices of pan-fried carrots, white alubia beans, and chopped dill tossed with a tangy-sweet lemon shallot dressing. It tastes good the day you make it, even better the day after.

A twist on the ubiquitous black bean salad - giant black beans and toasted almonds are tossed with a honey-jalapeno-lime dressing and served with a bit of crumbled feta over a bed of baby arugula.

A hearty adzuki and butternut squash soup recipe adapted from Jae Steele's Get It Ripe cookbook. The soup has a bit of chipotle flavor and is made even better with a drizzle of cilantro olive oil prior to serving.

A riff on Laurence Jossel's fantastic NOPA beans - plump, creamy beans baked in a bright, chunky chipotle tomato sauce, topped with crunchy breadcrumbs, plenty of oozy queso fresco, and an emerald drizzle of cilantro pesto.

Made from just five ingredients, this is a vibrant, chipotle-spiked, brothy soup that requires minimal babysitting. The dainty baby lima beans soften up in about an hour without any pre-soaking or fuss.

A simple yet over-the-top flavorful baked bean recipe dedicated to my dad. Beans are immersed in a decadent swamp of berry beer, dried berries, molasses, broth, and a few other flavorful accents.

A rich, hearty vegetarian mole recipe from Denis Cotter's new book. Seasonal beans, squash, and kale are baked in a rich, hearty chocolate and paprika-spiked mole.

This bean salad recipe salad features pretty heirloom beans along with a few black lentils, splashed with a brightly-flavored ginger-curry vinaigrette.

This quirky, yet amazing black bean brownie recipe delivers deliciously dense, bite-sized squares of melt-in-your-mouth fudge-textured brownies.

Hearty, healthy, and satistfying - this cabbage soup recipe is super simple to make. Slice a cabbage into thin ribbons and cook it down in a simple pot of sauteed potatoes, onions, beans, garlic and flavorful broth. Finished each bowl with a generous drizzle of great olive oil and a dusting of shredded cheese.

A tasty white bean salad topped with toasted walnuts, crumbled cheese, and a hint of citrus. Makes a good side dish, a satisfying lunch, or light dinner.

A big bowl of asparagus, sauteed garbanzos, chopped onions, toasted almonds, tossed with brown rice and drizzled with a bit of garlic-tahini dressing.

One of my favorite recipes from Super Natural Cooking - this hearty veggie burger recipe is made with garbanzo beans, cilantro, onions, lemon zest, eggs, bread crumbs, and sprouts.