The Promise of Beans

So, I promised I'd post a recipe for beans. My good friend, Lindsey, posted this on her Facebook page and I tried them. Delicious. Simple. Straight forward. The only thing I did differently was add extra salt and spices. I'm a girl who likes a lot of spice.

We ate the beans and rice covered in a savory chicken broth with cheese, avocados, and home made picante. It was a perfect mix of fresh and food storage. So delicious and nutritious. And, the whole meal was gluten-free, which is one of my new pursuits.

I'm Back

So, we went 11 months without a real pay check and here we are. We reached the end of the widow's oil, the grain in our storage did not fail. Now, we're back on the pay roll at a new company, and running our own natural cleaning products business.

While the coffers at the bank are pretty empty, my storage room is relatively full of the stuff we have put away, but don't really eat. Beans, for instance. We have CASES of beans. Red beans, white beans and black beans, mostly. All dried and all mysterious to me. I mean, I know how to use them once they are ready to go, but getting them to an edible state is a true enigma. I have a pressure cooker, but it scares the BeJeeBees out of me because of that insanely rocking pressure deal at the top. Plus, our pressure cooker is industrial size (of course, because we can never do anything small around here) and I'm not sure I want to cook up 20 quarts of beans. Anyway, there are things that I still need to learn about my food storage.

Also, working for a start-up (that's my guy, adventurously jumping into a great NEW company) and running our business, we need to get a lot more out of our fewer grocery store dollars. Now, I would NEVER disrespect all the coupon shopping divas I know by dissing the whole coupon idea. I will say, though, that our family eats a lot of fresh and bulk food that you don't see running through the coupon section of the Sunday paper. The challenge now is to maintain our current level of food snobbery and save money while we're at it. To me, this equates to:

• Lot's less processed stuff
• More home made, home grown sauces, pastas, breads, and veggie dishes
• Broadening our pallet preferences

So, what is in your pantry that you guiltily gloss over every time you go to retrieve your favorite foods? I'll make a list of mine for you next time, and see if I can't decide on some ways to use that stuff.

Also next time, a detailed family dialogue on menu making and food snobbery. I'm happy to be back. I'll post in the next little bit about this Fall's challenge.