The magical fruit

I never used to eat beans except the green variety coated in mushroom soup and covered with french fried onion rings. Then I met the sweetest boy from Texas...and married him! Let me tell you, this girl from Ohio was shocked to find they eat all sorts of beans and the cardboardiest cornbread you've ever tasted not just as a run-of-the-mill fare, but on holidays, too. So I've learned to take the sugar out of my cornbread and smack it on the lips of my boy, and cook up everything from pintos to black eyed peas. (Sorry Dallas family, I have yet to embraced the greens. Yuk.) Not only is it tasty but frugal, as well. Because we eat so many, I soak dry beans and cook a couple pounds at a time in my crock pot and freeze them, saving myself a few more pennies, but canned will work just as well. This was today's dinner:

Black Beans and Rice

2 cups water
1 cup brown rice

1/4 lb. bacon, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 banana peppers, chopped
2-15 oz. cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1-14.5 oz canned diced tomatoes with juice
1-1/2 Tbs. chili powder
2 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Put water in a pot and bring to a boil. Add rice and cook for 45 minutes while you chop veggies for beans and make cornbread.

In a large skillet, cook bacon until lightly browned. Add onions, garlic and banana peppers. Cook until softened. Add beans, tomatoes and seasonings and cook until thickened.

Serve beans over rice and serve with a cucumber salad and Laura's whole wheat cornbread muffins.