That Damned Grocery Bill!

This is not a food blog! However, periodically, it could be a blog about food. Like today.
When the today grocery bill for 2 people is higher than the 4 people bill of 15 years ago, and the 2 people involved are gong to retire soon, I think it's time to be bold and start looking at different ways of cooking. The funny thing is that an awful lot of old becomes new again.
My hobbyhorse has become legumes and pulses. Legumes are the plants and pulses are.....the little bits that we eat. You thought I was going to go on about perfume points!

Pulses include peas, beans and lentils, and we have been eating them for 13,000 years! Isn't that exciting?
As a tidbit, the Lebanese introduced lentils to Canada around the time of the depression. While the drought was killing off our wheat, it was providing some very good growing conditions for this little nutritious powerhouse. As a result, Canada is now the world's leading exporter of lentils and Saskatchewan (the province that's so easy to draw and so hard to spell) is the leader of the pack.
I'm so surprised that the legume/pulse section of most grocery stores is so small. I'm also disappointed that there isn't a recipe section close by to teach people what to do with all that lusciousness lying around, practically free.
As an FYI, there's a website for lentils: lentils.ca which has all kinds of recipes, and some great blogs: onehotstove.blogspot.ca , for example.
We need to be bolder and take our tummies to places they have never gone before....vegetarian cooking, back to Lebanon and Asia. Actually, older German cookbooks have generous numbers of pea & bean recipes.
Not to forget homemade pork and beans and the recipe for that is on the back of the haricot bean package.
I don't deny that some of these recipes are a little bit fiddley but that's the beauty of retirement; we're supposed to have more time to spend on the important things. In my life, cooking is a fun activity, so it's not as challenging to seek new food worlds as it would be for someone who sees cooking as a chore. So, realigning chore↓ and cooking↓ to cooking↑ and fun↑ might be one of the first priorities of retirement.
Let's cook great things and share them with our friends and family and talk about people who have way too much spare time and spend it blogging.