Beans and Rice month – Year 1
Year 1 Review
Beans and Rice month – Year 2
I think in the future, we will probably do bean and rice weeks…. maybe four a year to keep up with this year. 🙂 Because… because sometimes we want macaroni and cheese and I don’t like feeling like a failure to eat it. 🙂 Being able to eat bread, if only in moderation, was a big help this year.
Menu and Review
The Menu:
1. Herbed Lentils and Rice
This was one of our favorites: cooked with a very savory turkey broth I had made and topped with cheddar cheese. Excellent! I think the more flavorful your broth, the better this one is.
In the pot. (The french green lentils I cooked with seem to hold their firmness better than regular lentils)
These are a very pretty, yummy dish!
Sour cream = delicious! Limes = fun but unnecessary
3. Middle Eastern Rice with Black Beans & Chickpeas
This was spicier than I expected... and I only added HALF the cayenne. It was soupy at first, but not by the second day. (Probably because I used brown rice, which cooks slower) My favorite way to eat it is with cilantro, sour cream and salsa. Would go nicely on a tortilla.
4. Majedra
This is a nice, simple, tasty meal. Rice (brown basmati) topped with lentils (seasoned with 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp garlic... 2 cups of lentils cooked in 3.5 cups of broth) and topped with carmelized onions and plain yogurt.
5. Spicy Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup
This wasn't a favorite with me this year. Wish I hadn't made quite so much. We mixed with rice and topped with sour cream. It's pretty warm.
These are delicious! Especially with a little sour cream or cheese on tortilla chips. They're good plain too.
Rice in the pot
Beautiful beans in the pot.
7. Bean & Rice Tacos
On homemade tortillas! Yay me! 2 c flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking poswer, 1 T shortening (cut in finely), 1/2 c water. Let rest 15 minutes, then divide into 10 and roll very thin before cooking on a med-hi pan.
Tasty!
8. Salad
Our lettuce and fresh peas really took off, so we ate lots of salad! Topped with egg, cheese, nuts... no beans were needed.
Sometimes we had bread too.
This was ok, but not our favorite. It was too much anyway...
10. Chickpeas in Coconut Milk *Haven’t Made Yet
Brian LOVED these. I didn't like them much. Mostly because I used regular mustard instead of dijon mustard perhaps. They were very mustardy. And Brian thought that was great! 🙂
12. Roasted Vegetable Biriyani
A fancy dish deserves lots of pictures. Here is the mound before topping with the sides.
On a plate with the garnishes on top (sauteed cashews, raisins, onion). This was truly yummy and a big change from the bean-dominant flavor and texture we'd been having. Yum!
The garnishes were so pretty, I took a picture of them alone before sprinkling over the top of the whole biriyani.
It really was a very pretty dish that could be served to company or at a potluck. I am a quick cook, but it took me over two hours to make. But delicious!
The only problem I've ever had with bean burgers is how soft/mushy they are. Otherwise, they are wonderful. Very tasty!
14. Pita bread and Hummus (usually make regular and Roasted Red Pepper) *The red pepper hummus is a little spicy for the girls, but having two kinds is nice for us grownups. Both are delicious! *Didn’t make this time
This is a great post. Thank you for including pictures! We eat a lot of beans/lentils and rice because I’m a wannabe vegan (who in reality is more like a 75% vegetarian), so it’s lovely to have some recipes to try.
Lentils are also commonly used in Ethiopia in a stew-like dish called kik, or kik wot, one of the dishes people eat with Ethiopia’s national food, injera flat bread. Yellow lentils are used to make a nonspicy stew, which is one of the first solid foods Ethiopian women feed their babies…