Boorito 2010

I just stumbled upon this very cute promotion Chipotle is running on Halloween to raise awareness about "The Horrors of Processed Food" and help raise money for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Customers who go into a Chipotle restaurant after 6pm on Sunday dressed up as a horrifying processed food product can get an entree for just $2 and enter the costume contest for a chance to win up to $2500.

I agree whole-heartedly with the folks at Chipotle: "Processed food can be pretty scary" so you don't have to put much effort into making yourself look scary; just feign fake food and you're golden (come to think of it, anything fried in rancid vegetable oil to have a crispy golden brown exterior would make a pretty frightening costume).

I'd go out right now to try and put together a clever outfit if only I liked the fare at Chipotle.  Or more accurately, if the food at Chipotle liked me a little more.  The quality is definitely leaps and bounds above Taco Bell in terms of healthfulness and taste.  However, the few times I have eaten Chipotle burritos; the beans & rice have made an unpleasant exit from my body. I'm really not in the mood for a trick of this nature on Halloween (I have to go to work the next day).

I do enjoy homemade Tex-Mex food made with fresh ingredients.  But I am very picky about where and what I eat when it comes to this type of cuisine because one of my major pet peeves is improperly cooked beans.  What most people don't realize is that beans don't have to cause uncomfortable gas & bloating.  Soaking and cooking beans sufficiently help remove a large portion of the ogliosaccharides (long chains of sugar molecules) which the human body can not digest and results in flatulence when bacteria in the large intestine start to break down the saccharide polymers.  Make sure to discard the soaking liquid and use fresh water to cook with or else you'll end up back where you started.  I also like to cook my beans with a piece of kombu, aka. kelp, because it contains the enzyme, alpha-galactosidase, which has the ability to digest complex sugars and adds additional trace minerals to the mix.   Beans possess a lot of health benefits - soluble fiber, antioxidants, protein, minerals, etc - but they are of little use if your body can't access them.  So cook those beans well and cook them twice (yumm.. refried beans!) if you have to.