beans – Peaceful Reader

Cooking with Love

One of my favorite things is to make food whether it be just for me or for friends here for dinner. I like both the complicated and the uncomplicated recipes. My mother and grandmother loved to cook. When I lived with my grandmother she would chide me if I didn’t offer to make visitors like my uncles a sandwich. My young brain thought “they are grown ass men; they can get their own sandwiches” and now while I still agree with that sentiment I do love to welcome people into my home with a good meal.

My husband’s job changed over the last month and we’ve been able to spend time with friends more in the evening because he’s not in rehearsal every night. I’ve made a handful of great recipes that you might like.

I made this delicious Chicken Korma recipe from Tea for Turmeric a few weeks ago and it was a huge hit. I’m technically. not a meat eater but if I can find it from a local farm then I’m okay with it. I could have substituted tofu but my husband eats many vegetarian meals for me so I decided to switch it up. He loves Indian food and he liked this dish. I served it with a side of brown rice and some roti bread.

One night in January I had some women friends over to play cards and I made this black bean soup from Cookie + Kate with fresh bread. It was delicious and easy and I’ve now made it two more times. I’ve really stepped into the Blue Zones idea of eating beans or lentils as much as I can. The first time I made this I used the 4 cans of beans it calls for but for the second time I actually cooked dried black beans in my slow cooker while I was laboring away at school. It was worth it to make my own for the recipe but the cans definitely made the recipe quicker. I served this with lots of toppings like avocado, green onions, crumbled feta cheese, blue chips, and sour cream.

Tonight I made a stir-fry that was very flavorful. I was hungry for tofu and quinoa so I Googled those two ingredients and came up with Sesame Tofu Quinoa Bowl from The Almond Eater. I swapped the broccoli for cauliflower and adding in edamame. We had broccoli last night with some homemade mac and cheese. Also because I don’t like plastic bags I used a bowl with a lid to marinate the tofu with the Tamari sauce. It worked out great and we ate with chopsticks in front of the fire while we watched Triangle of Sadness~highly recommend the movie as well!

Good food feeds your soul! Bon Appetit!

Oh, I forgot dessert! I’m attempting to step away from sugar but sometimes you just need a good dessert to share with friends. This S’more recipe is a perfect winter treat-I served it with a little cup of Bailey’s.

Weekend Cooking; Adzuki Beans

(Photo Credit)

In December I reviewed Moosewood Restaurant; Cooking for Health which I’d checked out from the library. When I had the book I wrote down a few recipes and hoped that I might get the book for Christmas. I bought the ingredients for one of the recipes using adzuki beans because I’d never heard of them. Luckily I found them in bulk at my local organic store and it seemed like a sign. Well, you know how things go. I had those adzuki beans in a canning jar and it was the holiday season and the days got away from me. I never made the recipe but still had the beautiful beans staring at me every time I opened my dry storage cupboard.

Last week I got inspired to use them but realized I hadn’t copied down the original recipe. I did what everyone does; I googled a new recipe and this is what I found at Healthy Green Kitchen, a new foodie blog for me! Winnie at HGK credits Ree Drummond (do I even have to say it…Pioneer Woman) for her recipe. I made them and we’ve been eating them all week in different easy meals.

Beans

adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond
Serves 8-10

ingredients:

*4 cups dried aduki beans (or pinto or another type of beans)
*4 slices organic uncured bacon, sliced into 1 inch pieces- optional; bacon lends a nice smoky saltiness but you can leave out for vegetarian beans
*filtered water
*1 teaspoon course sea salt or to taste
*1 teaspoon black pepper or to taste
*1 teaspoon garlic powder or to taste
*1 teaspoon chili powder or to taste

directions:

1. If not using aduki beans, it’s best to soak your beans overnight in a large pot covered with water. After they have soaked, drain them and rinse several times. If you are using the adzuki beans just go ahead and use them.

2. Place rinsed beans and bacon in a large pot on the stove. Pour water over the beans to cover by 2 inches. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer.

3. Skim any foam that might rise to the top while cooking, and add additional water (or stock), if there does not seem to be enough liquid.

4. Cook until the beans are tender, about 1 1/2 hours (or as long as 3 hours for pinto and other beans).

5. Add the sea salt (don’t add too much if you’ve used stock) and pepper, plus the seasonings I mentioned (or others that you like) to taste. You can serve these in whole wheat or corn tortillas with the toppings of your choice: think grated raw cheese, fresh salsa, guacamole, organic sour cream, etc. Or have some in a bowl with a side of cornbread (I made a pretty good gluten-free one that you can see in the top picture). Fresh chopped tomato, cucumber, red pepper, and sliced avocado are also wonderful additions.

6. My favorite healthy way to eat these, though, is this: chop some collard greens very fine, add some olive oil and fresh lime juice, and mix with the beans, veggies, and salsa. Top with some green onions and minced cilantro- yum yum yum!

The first night we had them with brown rice, chopped tomatoes, a little curry sauce and whole wheat wraps. In the middle of the week I had them on top of a green salad while my children ate pasta. Last night I turned the last of them into my food processor with a little water, fresh squeezed lime juice and a few diced tomatoes with juice and created a refried bean consistency. We had soft shell small tacos using the beans as our base with freshly shredded mozzarella, avocado, tomatoes, and green lettuce from our co-op. The beans were delicious! My kids didn’t even realize they were eating the leftover beans re-purposed!

Adzuki beans are flavorful and very useful as you don’t have to soak them at all. If you can find them in bulk-give them a try.

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking hosted at Beth Fish Reads. Pop over and see what other food-related bloggers are cooking up!

Weekend Cooking; Recipes for friends

Friends of ours came to visit for the weekend. They live in Indiana, own a bakery and are food lovers like we are. My friendship with Barb predates husbands and children, when her and I waited tables together in Denver, CO. Eventually we both married, had children, she and her husband moved back to Chicago and eventually her hometown in Indiana. She is the one friend who’s visited me anywhere I’ve moved and the year we lived in Chicago she drove in often to visit and helped me find local great stores like Stanley’s for produce. Both of us were vegetarians for years (and years)and moved back into eating meat as local options came available. Now she’s added yoga to her morning routine so we sought out a Saturday morning yoga class at a nearby wellness center as my favorite studio held a pregnancy workshop this weekend.

Friday night after school I grocery shopped for two recipes I planned to make, came home and frantically vacuumed (vacuuming is the one thing I do to make my house presentable) the house (with Groovy Girl and Teenage Boy’s help). After cleaning for about an hour (moving piles around) I poured a glass of wine and started cooking, which is truly the *second best reason for having guests over. I picked two interesting recipes that we would eat on Saturday afternoon that wouldn’t involve me being in the kitchen all Saturday afternoon-the easy place to look for a recipe like that is in my Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker book by Robin Robertson. I wanted a recipe I hadn’t made before and the Pintos Picadillos list of ingredients appealed to me. On Saturday right before dinner I also whipped up this Couscous Salad recipe from Super Suppers Cookbook 2 by Judie Byrd-I talked about this cookbook and the Angel Biscuit recipe in another Weekend Cooking post.

We ate both recipes last night with some spring salad greens and a Newman’s Own ginger dressing, which was delicious!!
Everything tasted amazing and all the adults had second helpings. My kids love Pearl Couscous but didn’t love it mixed with all the veggies. Conversation and wine flowed freely as we discussed a variety of topics and played several board games with our children. They headed home this morning and the house is quiet.

Other food-related news: April’s Vegetarian Times magazine arived in my mailbox on Friday and with all the vacuuming, cooking and hanging out I haven’t cracked the cover but I look forward to paging through it today. I checked out two awesome library books the other day…Earth to Table; Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann and Reducing Your Foodprint; Farming, Cooking, and Eating for a Healthy Planet by Ellen Rodger. I will be reading these this week and I’m shocked that March is almost finished and April is right around the corner!! Hopefully, warmer weather is just as close cuz I’m still freezing here.

Two upcoming Weekend Cooking posts just waiting in my brain…My husband’s birthday was this week and I cooked several of his favorite meals, including Lamb Korma using an expensive cut of (local) lamb from our small organic store and I made Angel biscuits with a group of students after school one day last week. Oh, and I have to make a coconut pudding for a Haitian dinner on Wednesday!

Enjoy a pleasant and peaceful week…
*The number one reason for having houseguests is the shared conversation~sometimes lively, sometimes filled with laughter and sometimes in stillness.

Namaste~

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads-stop over and see what she has to say about pressure cookers and Lorna Sass!