I must confess. I love Campbell's Bean with Bacon Soup. I know. It's canned. I'm supposed to love all things from scratch. Well, actually, now I do. This soup smells exactly like Campbell's but it tastes even better because of the TLC, of course, but also all those fresh veggies. In a can of Campbell's there are maybe a half dozen carrot pieces and a few identifiable itty bitty chips of bacon but this soup has almost as many veggies as there are beans!
It's very simple and easy to make and absolutely delicious. I'll be making this again and again!
Happy Almost New Year! Legend has it that eating black-eyed peas (or Cow Peas to be a stickler for exactness) on New Year's Day will bring good luck and fortune in the new year. We can all use a little of that, right?
This recipe is for my version of Hoppin' John, the southern classic of black-eyed peas, bacon or sausage or ham hock, and rice. The problem is I'm all about eating up the luck but not as hip on black-eyed peas so I cheat and basically make another southern staple: red beans and rice, but add a can of (cooked) black-eyed peas. They actually add an earthy, delicious undertone to the red beans and rice without overpowering it for those of us who aren't big black-eyed pea fans.
Brags go out to the hubs for this little wonderful dinner last night (and then "lunch" again at 0100 at work). So yummy, so easy, so....manly (but this chick digs it too!). I woke up yesterday afternoon to the smell of something delicious floating out of the slow cooker but wasn't allowed to tinker with The Man's meal-making. No problem. I love to cook but I love to be cooked for on my work and sleep days. No complaints from me at all! and, boy, was I in heaven when he was finished.
The basic idea is that he made pinto "brown" beans but instead of the usual ham, he used boneless country ribs for the seasoning meat. Then he added an easy but really tasty BBQ sauce (Steven Raichlen, of course!) and served it ladled over microwaved sweet potatoes and with a big side of steamed of broccoli. It was divine! Both times!
A word about the nutrition counts. I am not a low-carb at any cost diet fan. I am a good whole food vs processed food (carb) girl. Sweet Potatoes? Yes! Beans? Yes! Hostess Cupcakes? Yeeee....NOOOOOO! So while this recipe does, indeed, contain 75 carbs it also balances that out with 20, (TWENTY) grams of fiber. Those are very good carbs, my friends, and we heartily enjoyed every one of them.
One of my favorite meals from childhood was "Brown" beans and cornbread. Funny, I never realized until I started blogging how we never called beans by their real names but by colors: Brown beans = Pintos, White beans = navy, Black beans = Cuban. Still a favorite meal, I like them just as well meatless as with ham or sausage added and my favorite way to cook them is in the crockpot. Interestingly, I did a small experiment a few years ago and found that, in the crockpot, soaking the beans overnight doesn't make more than a 15-30 minute cooking time difference. So I don't bother anymore. I work nights so usually when I make them, I come in from work in the morning, throw them together in the slow cooker (takes about 5 minutes!) and wake up to the lovely smell of beans and cumin. Tasty, not to mention so very good for me!
We have a small group that gets together on the Sunday nights I'm not working to watch....well...first it was Dexter we were all crazy about, then we all got hooked on The Walking Dead, and now we're all hooked on FEAR the Walking Dead, sort of TWD: Los Angeles if it were in the CSI franchise. What used to be "Dexter Dinners" became "Dead Dinners" and is now "Fear the Dead Dinners"
Auntie Miranda and I switch off cooking or one of us makes the entrée and the other one makes a dessert. Sometimes we cook in theme but mostly we use these dinners as a way to experiment and try out new recipes we find interesting. This was one of those. I mentioned that I'd seen a Pioneer Woman recipe for "7 Can Soup" that I wanted to try. She laughed and said she'd bought the same 7 cans wanting to try it to. Hey, two names sharing one brain!
We all loved this soup and what Auntie and I loved the most was the ease. The directions are to make it on the stove. I threw all the ingredients into the crockpot and went to bed for the day (worked the night before). I would have called it "chili" rather than "soup" but I'm not trying to split hairs, it's just a good chili with a little extra oomph. We definitely will be making it again (so nice to have it all in the pantry for times when I don't have the patience or the time to spend thawing/browning ground beef.) We're actually even considering it for our annual Halloween Party.
You know how you, okay: me, pin a million recipes on Pinterest that look good or proclaim to be "the best ________ ever!" and you, okay: me, either never get around to trying them out or I do try them and they are lackluster at best?
This one (photo to left) works--it's a keeper!
It's called chili mac but, to be honest, it's what we called, when I was growing up, Mom's goulash. The differences are the cheese, the beans, the chili powder, and the best of all: ONE POT! I know, right? That last part made my little heart skip a beat. ONE POT. No cooking the pasta separately and the skillet to brown the ground beef, etc. Just brown, drain, dump in cans from the pantry, pasta that tastes even better from having cooked in the sauce, and it's a done deal. To most people, that's called a weeknight dinner win-win. To me, as a 12-hour nightshifter with a non-traditional work schedule, it's work night or sleep day win-win.
I did make a few changes, no reflection on the original recipe, I just had to work around what I had in my pantry and fridge. I used double the amount of meat (hubs is a big meat eater) half of it ground beef and half ground sausage. I used large shell pasta instead of macaroni simply because that's what I had, I doubled the amount of cheese, used kidney beans only, and used shredded "Mexican" cheddar/monterey jack mix, again, because that's what I had on hand.
My new go-to recipe for Lentil Soup from German World Magazine. The addition of vinegar and potatoes makes it a shade different from the lentil soup I grew up eating but, wow, what a difference! Love this stuff. Easy to make on the stove or could easily be converted to the slow cooker/Crock-pot, there's a lot of flavor jammed into what appears to be humble ingredients.
A huge hit with my officially unofficial tasting staff: Chris and Evan. If they had hands free (as in not chowing down) they'd physically give it two thumbs up.
Our Respiratory Dept Council is sponsoring a dept Chili Cook-off tomorrow. I wasn't going to sign up but when Mary jokingly put my name on the list, I thought "Why not? I've been wanting to try my hand at green pork chili like we've had when we've traveled out west." After searching through recipes and experimenting a little, I came up with this healthy twist on the genre. The recipe's "secret" ingredients include Herdez Salsa Verde, Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Sweet Potatoes. Intrigued? I hope so.
Where my standard chili recipe focuses on hearty beans and a rich beef base, this recipe is lighter, with less fat, lighter beans, and gets it's richness from the warm spices and chocolate. If it sounds too strange to be believed, just take a leap of faith with me. Chocolate and cinnamon really make this chili warm with layers of flavors but with none standing out on its own.
My crockpot and chili have already been delivered tonight for the competition tomorrow. Wish me luck! And good luck to the dept council on your fundraiser-- not to mention: THANK YOU for all your hard work!
I'm not a huge fan of black-eyed peas but this is one recipe I love and make every year: Cowboy Caviar. With its mix of black-eyed peas, black beans, corn, celery and other vegetables, it's a wonderful cold side dish, you get your New Year's Day good luck black-eyed peas, and it's a great do ahead recipe for New Year's Eve or New Year's Day parties!
While black-eyed peas are grown in many countries, they are particularly eaten here in the southern United States. There are two southern traditions that explain the superstition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for luck, both grew out of the Civil War. The first is the legend that whenever Sherman's Union troops sacked cities or plantations and raided the food supplies, the northeners considered black-eyed peas and field corn to be food for slaves and stock, and left it, so all the starving southeners felt "lucky" to have any food left to celebrate New Year's Day with at all.
The second is a much more pleasant legend. Again placed during Civil War times, legend has it that many slaves celebrated the New Year's day that the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect by eating Hoppin' John, a common, hearty dish, made of a combination of black-eyed peas, rice, pork, and greens (also yummy).
Other legends place black-eyed pea eating as far back as the Talmud and the Egyptians but having grown up eating very southern-ish, my favorite is the thought of celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation and the hope of great strides in civil rights of all men and women of all everything in our country's future.
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