My husband Cobalt really likes beans and rice. He’s told me time and again he could live off just these two foods and be just fine!
I’m grateful to have married such a man. :) Lots of guys would eat burgers and fries everyday or steak and potatoes or drink bottles and bottles of beer. I guess I wouldn’t mind that so much (I would definitely still love him!) but I appreciate his simplistic food preference. :)
Personally, I find rice and beans quite delicious myself! And the fact that they are incredibly affordable makes them even tastier. I was really excited to learn about this fact this year during a run to Walmart for wheat flour. Cobalt and I had walked down the dried foods aisle to check out pricing and our mouths dropped at the sight of all sorts of dried beans, lentils, rices for $1-$3 a bag. We grabbed two bags each of the $1 bags of garbanzo beans, black beans, brown rice, lentils, and barley. These I poured into quart mason jars, along with their instructions, and organized them on a shelf in my kitchen cabinet.
Now, I usually do still buy canned beans because they’re more tedious to cook from dry. But a quick side note: hummus made from dried garbanzo beans is SO MUCH CHEAPER than hummus at a grocery store. Think less than $1 per container vs. almost $5 a container. Say whaaat?
My point is that it’s totally worth the tiny bit of hassle to make hummus if I save money. :)
- – – – -
So just a little food science to edu-mi-cate your brain — rice and beans are called complementary proteins. This is because when paired together, rice and beans make a complete protein. A complete protein is a protein that possesses all nine essential (i.e. received in diet) amino acids (building blocks of proteins) while an incomplete protein does not.
More about proteins here.
- – – – -
This week we’ve been low on monies, thus I’ve had to scramble to find food to eat. But fortunately we still had dried rice and a can of black beans. My favorite way to make this following dish is to add other, colorful ingredients such as tomatoes and green peppers. I was lucky today to have both vegetables fresh from my backyard :)
So then I started the process of making brown rice. If you don’t know how to cook rice (it can be a tricky process), read my post about it.
After cooking the brown rice, I took out my wok (you could also use a large pan) and started sautéing chopped onions and peppers in about 2 TBS canola oil. When they were almost done cooking I added diced tomatoes. Once the colors were vibrant, I added half the pot of rice (I had made way too much on purpose for future meals) and a whole can of black beans (drained). For about 10 minutes I stirred all of the ingredients, sprinkling spices to boost all the flavors.
Then it was ready to serve!
As usual, Cobalt loved it. :)
0
0
0
