Asiago White Beans with Farro, Kale, and Tomatoes

Good news: ONE POT and FIVE INGREDIENTS to yummmmmmy.

This recipe — side note: can we still call it a recipe if it’s 5x easier than mac and cheese from a box? doing it — is for hungry hungry hippos like yours truly who want 1) HEALTHY and 2) EASY food sitting on their table, like, ten minutes ago. And also may or may not have access to a kitchen. Serious.

This one pot wonder is a healthy combination of chewy farro aka my latest food obsession, white beans, tomato sauce (Dear DeLallo, I luv you and thank you for not adding sugar or other unnecessary things to your dreamy tomato basil sauce), tender bright green baby kale, halved grape tomatoes, and a handful of Asiago or Parmesan or – I’m gonna go there – shredded taco cheese if you don’t have anything else and you need to finish up a bag of it left over from your enchiladas verdes last week. Just lock me up right now. I am a complete and utter food criminal.

This whole thing was like a delicious Italian Rice and Beans combination, which is the best news ever because there is little I love more in this life than a cozy, humble, comforting rice and beans dinner.

It gave my hungry self a feel-good bear hug at the end of a long, exhausting day full of me pretending to knock down walls and generally be useful at all during a kitchen remodel. Exhausting, I’m telling you.

Tomatoes, cheese, greens, and beans on a wooden plate.

A note to the new readers who haven’t heard me say it yet: I’m cooking in the basement. Like, making meals for us as real people to eat for dinner, and making meals to share with you as food blog readers.

And you guys. I don’t mean in a kitchen in a basement – I mean like we packed all our stuff in boxes to prepare for the remodel, brought them downstairs, set out a few appliances (hi, rice cooker!) on a work bench covered with a tablecloth, and called the whole thing done.

I’m thinking I might have mentioned this before, like, one hundred and one times in the last three posts because I have this bad habit thing about never letting my woe-is-me situations go unnoticed. But when I am cooking in the basement, making really randomly delicious, healthy, and super easy things in small electric kitchen appliances instead of succumbing to the multiple happy hour snacks within a one minute drive from our house, you are going to know about it.

How To Make Our Asiago White Bean Farro (1 MIN 30 SEC):

So in addition to shoveling this healthy these Asiago White Beans and Farro and veggie crew straight from rice cooker to mouth, we are most definitely still working through this whole kitchen remodel and loving the progress.

So far, we’ve gone from two separate rooms (kitchen and dining room) to one open space. This redistribution of space is a BIGGIE BIG DEAL for us small house dwellers. The potential for natural light that I’ll get in the kitchen now from those two double doors being exposed is just making me crazy excited.

Asiago White Beans with Farro, Kale, and Tomatoes in a pot with a wooden spoon.

This week, Bjork and I are off and running for a road trip along the California coast — weeeeeeeeee! We’ll be hitting up lots of places for a whole bunch of different stuff, most of which revolves around food photography and you know that makes me one happy California dreamin girl. I hope you will virtually ride along in the backseat of our little economy rental car by following along on my favoritist of all the social medias, INSTA-GEE. I’ll even share my car snacks with you.

While we’re gone, our amazingly talented house fixin team is going to be getting the electric, plumbing, and drywall all good to go. So when we come back in eight days, we’ll have a real official space that doesn’t look like a skeleton of a house anymore.

One thing, though. Does a person need to limit how often they text, call, and FaceTime their contractor during a mid-remodel trip? Please say no. I already have him on speed dial.

Asiago White Beans with Farro, Kale, and Tomatoes on a plate with a fork.

If kitchen remodeling means I get to eat this all the time for all the meals and be happy and healthy and save lots of time, I think I might just like to make kitchen remodeling and basement cooking a regular part of our lives.

(Do not quote me on that ever.)

But truthfully, honestly, for realio, I just love this so super easy rice cooker one pot Asiago White Bean and Farro combo like 200x better than anything else that’s come out of the basement kitchen up till this point. And I don’t even think I would need to be cooking in a basement in order to love the comforting combo of the farro, the white beans, fresh veggies, tangy tomato sauce and sharp Asiago or Parmesan cheese. It’s healthy, colorful, loaded with protein and fiber, adaptable with what you have on hand but don’t even think about bringing up taco cheese right now.

This whole thing = happy, healthy, extremely easy, one pot dinner.

And that = a better Monday.