Pasta Grains & Beans
This is the pantry backbone of the grocery section: pastas of every persuasion, whole grains and a wall of organic canned beans. It's an aisle built for real weeknight cooking — dinner staples you can keep on hand — with a natural-foods twist: chickpea pasta and konjac noodles next to fresh cheese ravioli, quinoa and millet beside rice alternatives, and canned beans that are organic and mostly no-salt-added.
Read more
The pasta shelves range from familiar to frontier. Brown-rice and chickpea pastas are labelled gluten-free by their makers and cook up close enough to wheat pasta that the household won't stage a protest; konjac and hearts-of-palm noodles serve the low-carb crowd; and Contes' fresh cheese ravioli covers the nights when dinner needs to be ready in the time it takes water to boil.
Grains are the quiet workhorses. Organic quinoa cooks in about fifteen minutes and takes any seasoning you throw at it; millet and buckwheat make hearty porridges, pilafs and salads. Konjac and hearts-of-palm "rice" offer a low-calorie stand-in anywhere regular rice would go. Most bags here are single-ingredient, so the label reading is refreshingly brief.
The bean section leans organic and no-salt-added — navy, kidney, cannellini, aduki, butter beans, chickpeas and black-eyed peas, from brands like Eden Foods and Earth's Choice. No-salt-added cans put the seasoning back in your hands, and a rinse before cooking is all the prep they need. Between a can of beans, a bag of grain and a box of pasta, dinner is never far away.
