

I eat a legume for pretty much every meal:
- Peanut butter on regular rotation for convenience foods
- Peas or beans or snap peas as a component in pasta dishes or salads
- Blanched peas or green beans as a vegetable side when I’m eating dinner with a main and sides separate.
- Edamame with Asianish noodle dishes, including instant ramen
- Snow peas or snap peas as a component in stir fries
- Beans in salads (things like kidney beans or black beans)
- Lentils or beans in fast casual rice bowls of a Mediterranean influence
- Some kind of lentil or chickpea dish with South Asian food.
- Beans with Mexican food because duh
- Dried beans with my braises (cassoulet, chili, other random assortments of ingredients in a braising pot/dutch oven), only you gotta be conscious of how dried beans don’t cook properly in acidic environments.
I personally don’t care for tofu. I’ll eat it when it’s a component of a dish I happen to already be eating, but I rarely seek it out to be the star of the dish I order or make, with only a few exceptions.
But adding legumes/pulses to your meals is an easy way to get more protein, including amino acids (like lysine) that aren’t present in traditional grains like wheat or rice. And they’re generally a good source of certain types of soluble fiber good for gut health. I’m also generally less hungry (and get full faster) when I’m eating plenty of fiber and protein, so legumes help with both of those.
I eat a lot, so I still eat a decent amount of meat overall, but as a percentage of my 3500-calorie diet it’s probably smaller than the average Westerner.
The traditional HBO model of being approximately 30 minutes or 60 minutes, more or less, was reasonable. Some episodes were long (Sopranos Season 4 finale was 75 minutes long, about 25% longer than its time slot), and some were short (Sopranos season 2, episode 8 was only 43 minutes). But they generally stuck around that time frame, and the majority of the episodes were between 50-60 minutes long.
The Bear’s shortest episode was 18 minutes. Most of its episodes are between 30-40 minutes. But it has two monster episodes, season 2’s “Fishes” at 66 minutes, and Season 4’s “Bears” at 69 minutes. Those ratios are way off, and hard to plan sequential non-binge watching. At a certain point it’s disrespectful of the audience’s time.