An interviewer recently asked me about my favorite things to do with canned beans, and when I mentioned tacos, he was so surprised (“I’ve never thought about that!”) that it surprised me, too. Beans and tortillas are such natural partners in my world — I’ve been eating them together since my West Texas childhood — that I hadn’t really thought this might not be true for everyone. As convenient as canned beans are, if you’ve cooked a pot from dried, as I instructed a couple of weeks ago, you’ve g

A week ago, I showed you how to cook a simple pot of beans and linked to five recipes you could make using beans from that pot. The theory: Cook this building block once, then have it at the ready throughout the week. Or month. Or quarter. The thing is, beans freeze so well — especially if you cook them from dried and store them in their cooking liquid — that you can also reap the benefits of this easy cooking session over a much longer period. [How to cook a simple, flavorful pot of beans and

I’ve said — or written — it so many times, I long ago lost count. But here goes again: The key to quick-but-interesting weeknight cooking is to get in the habit of making building blocks on the weekend when you have time, and then learn to use them in a variety of ways during the week. As a vegetarian, I’m talking about roasting vegetables, steaming grains and, my favorite, simmering a pot of beans. Now that we’re spending so much time at home, you don’t have to wait until the weekend to do suc

Pesto belongs in the pantheon of flexible recipes. Sure, the classic combination is basil, garlic, Parmesan, pine nuts and olive oil, but I’ve made it with all manner of nuts, hard cheeses and leafy herbs (or other greens) and been perfectly happy. This is my way of saying: Here is another recipe I’ve tried to design for maximum adaptability and therefore maximum utility in this time of maximum anxiety. This simple, bright and pretty pasta dish from the great Yotam Ottolenghi originally called

Comfort and ease: That’s what quesadillas have always represented to me, since the very first time I folded a tortilla over some cheese. You can complicate almost any dish, but it’s pretty hard to do that with quesadillas. There’s not much room on a 6-inch corn tortilla, so you’ve got to keep the fillings pretty minimal. My favorites are beans (of course) and mushrooms. For the former, use whatever you have cooked — or in the can. Just warm the beans and mash them lightly with some spices (cumin and smoked paprika are my favorites) and a squeeze of lime if you’ve got it.

I think I speak for all of us when I say my head is spinning these days, full of more questions than answers. What was certain a few months, a few weeks, even a few days ago is now anything but. People around the world are losing loved ones, livelihoods, their sense of community, security, safety. The fear and anxiety about the short and long term threaten to overwhelm us. And here we are at home, more isolated than ever, just when we need one another the most.

Adaptability. That’s what the world is requiring of us right now, and that’s certainly what we need in our recipes. Because who knows what we’ll find the next time we check our phones, open a paper, scroll through social media? Will we want to go to the grocery store? Will we be able to? Just in case, I take comfort in knowing I can cook with what I’ve got around, and I want to stock up on things that will last.

Can you imagine eating the same lentil soup at your desk for lunch virtually every workday for almost two decades? I couldn’t, at least not until I talked to Reid Branson, a Seattle nurse manager who has been doing just that. The soup is from Crescent Dragonwagon’s 1992 book “Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread,” and Branson fell so in love with it that it changed his lunch routine for the rest of his professional life.

Once, many years ago, a fellow food writer sidled up to me and asked: “I don’t really cook with spices, do you?” he said. “I just like everything to taste fresh.” I couldn’t have disagreed more. Not only do I adore cooking with spices, but I find them key to adding layers of flavor to vegetables, to unlocking the secrets of dishes from around the world, to getting out of almost any cooking rut. Spices, I said, can make anything taste more, not less, fresh.

You’ve probably seen plenty of “Buddha bowls” on Instagram, especially if you follow healthy-eating accounts: As far as I can tell, the term most frequently refers to a grain bowl topped with vegetables. There’s plenty of debate about where the name originated.

Here’s another way to cook up the protein-on-starch marriage that’s so popular the world over. You know, the one that produced black beans and rice in Cuba, pasta with lentils in Sicily and, for two examples closer to home, Cincinnati chili and Texas-style Frito pie.

You remember the last terrible veggie burger you ate. I know you do. It was either so dry and crumbly that no amount of condiment could save it (or save you), or so wet and mushy that the patty started to squeeze out of the bun when you ate it (yum?). As the food and dining editor of The Washington Post, and a longtime vegetarian, I’ve tasted hundreds of veggie burgers in restaurants. I can count on one hand the number of truly great ones. This includes those high-tech, modern patties by Impo

“We’re just here for the beans.” That’s what we told the waiter at Máximo Bistrot in Mexico City, where my husband, Carl, and I were honeymooning. More specifically, the beans we had heard so much about, the ones chef Eduardo Garcia calls his “very, very old fashioned” soup. These beans, which he gets from the state of Hidalgo, are named cacahuate because they resemble peanuts when raw. (As I discovered later, they’re the same variety as cranberry or borlotti.)

Shepherd’s pie was originally named for the inclusion of ground lamb, but this one — with all the comforts of the classic intact — uses lentils, so a farmer’s pie it is.

The idea for this dish comes from New Jersey chef Michelle Fuerst, who calls the combination of pasta, beans and bread crumbs her “triple carb threat.” Bread crumbs are an essential element of so many great pasta dishes, adding that irresistible crunch that here balances the creamy borlotti (a.k.a. cranberry) beans and the al dente pasta. An unorthodox addition is a little red miso, which provides the salt and umami you’d get from, say, anchovies.

At the risk of sounding, well, obvious, sometimes the only thing I want is mac and cheese (or, with my apostrophes appropriately in place, “mac ’n’ cheese”). You know how those cravings hit: You get a glimpse of a recipe or a dish and you can’t get the idea out of your head until it’s in your stomach. What will it take to get from there to here? That’s how I felt when I saw a recipe for a vivid green version of the dish in Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook.

Pasta with mushrooms: It was the default (and sometimes only!) vegetarian dish in restaurants for probably far too long. We’ve come a long way — now it’s entirely possible to eat out without ever feeling the need to declare a dietary restriction if all you’re doing is avoiding meat and seafood. That’s how many options there are on most modern, urban menus. Exactly none of that progress means that pasta with mushrooms has lost its appeal. If anything, the dish now seems almost nostalgic. At Fel

If there’s one thing better than a baked potato, it’s a twice-baked potato. You know the drill: You scoop out the cooked flesh, mix it with some cheesy-fatty goodness, spoon it back into the shells and bake again until it’s bubbling hot and browned, maybe even crispy on top. Retro, and good. This recipe, from BuzzFeed’s Goodful brand, takes the idea in a different direction, with sweet potatoes treated to ingredients popular in Middle Eastern cooking.

If you’ve had just one or maybe two minestrones in your life, you might be excused for thinking that they’re always the same — summer vegetables, say, with tomatoes and beans and tiny pasta. But the beauty of this Italian soup is that it is many things to many people, and it varies widely by season and geography. Some versions include rice instead of pasta, peas instead of (or in addition to) beans. In Liguria, they add that region’s beloved pesto. No matter where it’s made, the soup is inspired

Black-eyed peas are a Southern staple, especially on New Year’s Day, when cooks combine them with rice for Hoppin’ John. Eat them for good luck, if you’re into that sort of thing. These little legumes are staples in plenty of other cultures’ diets, too, all year round. I love Nigerian-style stewed black-eyed peas (often served with fried plantains), the lobia masala of north India and the African-Caribbean black-eyed-pea fritters called accra (also known as akara or accara).