Friday Foodie: Not-really-refried beans

Since I met Billy, I have been on the bean bandwagon. Make all the jokes you want but beans are easy to cook, taste great, can be eaten any time of day and, bonus, are very healthy! In El Salvador, like much of Latin America, beans are a staple food. Beans and rice together form a complete protein which is a great substitute for lots of people who cannot afford meat. So, down there, its normal for everyone to eat beans every day, sometimes at more than one meal. When I'm there, I have beans at every breakfast and sometimes at dinner, too. When in Rome...

Anyway, today's post is specifically about refried beans. This is one of the two ways they typically eat beans in ES, the other being a pan fried bean and rice combo called casamiento. I had never had refried beans before going to ES so I didn't know how to cook them myself. We tried to get the recipe when we were down there but things got lost in translation and I was not able to really understand the steps. Google to the rescue. I found this recipe on my favorite recipe site, Allrecipes, and its so easy even a caveman can do it. You should probably go get your crock pot out now. This will only take a second.

Not Really Refried Beans

Ingredients:

3 cups dried back or small red beans
1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters
4-6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 small jalapeno, seeded and roughly chopped
5 tsp salt
2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
9 cups liquid - any combination of water, chicken stock or vegetable stock will do.

Put everything in the crock pot. Set to high for 8 hours but check periodically to make sure that you haven't run out of liquid. Add more if necessary. When 8 hours is up, pour away any remaining liquid on top and reserve. Mash beans with a potato masher or put in food processor for a smoother consistency. Use reserved liquid to achieve desired texture.

Here are some great uses for refried beans:

Grilled beans and cheese
Beans and eggs
Breakfast burritos
Rice, beans and veggie bowl
Mexican Pizza
Pupusas (see recipe next Friday!)
Bean and avocado quesadilla

Buen provecho!!

Friday Foodie: Spinach Balls

I know that's not the most attractive name for a food but if I call something a ball, my kids (OK, Sebastian) is more likely to eat it. Garbanzo beans are known as balls in my house. It always feels weird to say it - Want to try some balls? More balls? - but us moms do what we gotta do, right?

Anyway, to the spinach balls. Technically, they are called Spinach Gnocch-Wee. Yes, you guessed it - this is a recipe from the infamous Weelicious site. Catherine does a fantastic job of incorporating grown-up flavors and nutritious ingredients into toddler-friendly recipes. I have been trying a bunch of her concoctions lately and this one is a hit with the whole fam.

My only suggestions are to use extra flour (I doubled what she said, using about 4tbsp total) and I added marinara sauce on the side for dipping. 'Cause kids love dipping. Otherwise, this tasted so good and its not as pasta-y is other pastas (think tortellini or macaroni) so I don't feel like I'm giving the kids one big carb-overload for dinner. I cooked half and froze half (ended up with about 30-35 balls) and my kids ate about 4 each. It doesn't sound like much but they don't eat a lot at dinner so that was actually quite good for them. And Mommy and Daddy ate the leftovers :)

Hands on time isn't bad. You have to drain the spinach really well, and form the balls but the food processor does the hard work of mixing everything and that just takes a few seconds. The cooking time is quick, which I really like because once my kids see me head to the kitchen, they want dinner NOW. Definitely a recipe I would make ahead of time and then cook right before serving.

Also, I did make tortillas (like I said I would try last week) and they came out OK. Taste was great, texture was good, but shape left a lot to be desired. It was hard to roll them out and because of that they did not make nice circle-ish shape. So, I will try again and let you know how it goes next week!

Friday Foodie: Homemade Hummus

For a while, I have been thinking about incorporating more food posts into this blog. I tried to start a food blog but I just don't have the time to devote to it. And I didn't want to put random recipes on a blog that's supposed to be about me and my kids and family but, in reality, food and family intersect quite a bit. 3 times a day, in fact. And I have posted here and there about cooking food, especially for the kids, so I decided that I would make Fridays my food post day. This isn't intended to be a meme (am I even using that term correctly?) but if you'd like to join in, I'd love you to, if only so that I can cook your favorite recipes for my family!

To kick things off, I am writing about hummus. Pretty simple stuff that most of us buy at the grocery store. Collette loves it. Like, eat it by the spoonful. Well, handful - who am I kidding? That girl won't let a spoon slow her down when there's hummus around. However, hummus isn't cheap - the big tub (16oz.) is $5! Collette could eat half that in the blink of an eye. At first, I was upset that she wouldn't eat it on pita or a sandwich. I wanted the bread to slow her down and fill her up so the hummus might last a few days. Big shocker - Collette won the hummus battle. But that's ok. Because I remembered that making your own hummus is super easy. I did try it once and it didn't come out well but that's when I only had a blender. I now have a food processor and knew it could do the job.

I used this simple recipe. As I make it more often, I'm sure I'll play around with flavors. Weelicious also has some great twists on hummus that I'll be giving a try eventually. Now that I have made it once (and it tastes great!) I will never buy hummus again. And the cost can't be beat. I did a little back of the envelope calculation and my 16 oz of hummus cost me a little more than $1 to make. I do cook my own chickpeas (instead of canned beans) and that also brings the cost down. But still. Such a deal.

I have lots more on my list of things to make from scratch because we go through them so fast. Next up is probably tortillas. We gotta stay in touch with out Latin roots here at la Casa de Soto. If they come out well, I'll put that up next Friday.

Bon Apetit!