Beans, Beans and more Beans

In our quest for edible soft food, we found that our old standby, beans, is the ultimate soft-ish, tasty, full of protein and healthy-ish meal- it is mostly health-ish because we usually eat them with a scoop of white rice and top them with sour cream, cheese and crushed tortilla chips- (I am going to purchase brown rice and try Megan's boil the brown rice trick- ask her about it:)

Beans and Rice moment #1 is adapted from allrecipes

BLACK BEAN SOUP

Dump 4 cans of drained and rinsed black beans into a pan over medium heat.

Add about 4 cups of chicken broth and 1 1/2 tsp of cumin.

Stir in 2 cups of something salsa-ish and salt to taste.

Simmer for 15 minutes.  At this point there is a decision to be made- Annie, of Annie Eats fame, blends up the beans with an immersion blender to make a smooth soup....I blended up about half of the beans so that we still had some whole or semi-whole beans to give it a bit of texture and then of course you could skip the blending thing all together.  I also threw in some chopped fresh cilantro because EVERYTHING tastes better with cilantro!

Beans and Rice take2 comes from dad's infamous beans and rice recipe

EB'S PINTO BEANS AND RICE (the lazy day version)

Ideally, I get my act together and put 2 cups of dry pinto beans into a pan or crockpot, cover them with water and boil them for 5 hours but in my real world..that just didn't happen this week but the GOOD news of the day is that even using canned beans- these beans were AMAzinG!

Dump 4 cans of pinto beans into a pot over medium heat- dump in the liquid from the cans as well

Add some dried onion and if desired 3 or 4 strips of uncooked bacon chopped into small pieces.

Simmer for a while 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hr something like that....

Add 1 small can tomato sauce, 2 tsp garlic powder, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tbsp mustard and pepper to taste.  You can also add some crumbled and browned hamburger or ground turkey or maybe some hot sausage- because it is all about the hot sausage;)  

Simmer for another while- see above.

Dad served the beans whole- I immersion blended about half of them (because of our soft food situation).

Once again we served them over rice- chopped cilantro is always a good thing:) 

Keith suggested that we open a bean and rice restaurant after tasting these beans- YEAH dad!!