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Saturday, September 15, 2012

How to create multiple meals on 2 cups of dried beans!

We've challenged ourselves to live on $500 this month for all consumables - inspiration from The Poorganic Life blog!  Here is my best food tip for making that possible.

Buy one bag of dried black beans, $3.99 for 4lbs.

Use for multiple meals in that month and still have some left over!

Our black bean meals for this week are highlighted below.

Soak 2 cups of dried beans overnight after carefully inspecting them for bad beans and/or stones - husband did this part because he's from Texas and takes beans seriously.

The next day, cook the beans for 1.5 hours in a dutch oven OR in a crock pot on high while you attend church for 3-4 hours.  Drain all liquid and you should be left with approximately 45 ounces or the equivalent of 3 store bought cans.

Black Bean Burgers - I fell in love with this recipe a few weeks ago and have made 2 batches so far (side note, this recipe is by far the best I've found on the internet, most recipes taste like eating black beans out of a can, yuck, but this blogger is an extremely talented chef!).  These burgers work out awesomely for lunches when I haven't made enough left overs the night before.  I just grab an apple, burger, slice of cheese, bun and run!

Out of the cooked beans, I scooped 30 ounces and made 8 burgers!  My kids won't eat them but that just leaves more for me!!!

From the remaining 15 ounces I made 2 burritos for Sunday lunch.  Since the burrito's is my creation I'll list the recipe here:

Black Bean Burritos with chicken/cheese/corn/carrots

  • 15 ounces of black beans mixed with the following two spices:
    • 1/2 teaspoon cumin
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup of corn - fresh or frozen (mine was leftover from the burgers)
  • 1 Tablespoon of cooked carrots - chopped up in small pieces (mine were left over from carrot muffins)
  • Cheddar cheese - as much as you prefer
  • 6 ounces of chicken - seasoned to your preference (ours was bought from Aldi for $2.00 - pre-cooked)
Split everything evenly into 4 plates, adults get theirs on a burrito, kids get theirs on a 4 divider plate with tortilla chips.  Add sour cream and/or salsa until you are content.

You might be thinking it's so weird to add carrots to a burrito, but you won't even taste it and we only did because we had already mixed them with the corn and they needed to be eaten up!  Feel free to omit the carrot if it's too much trouble to add this extra step.  

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