Meatless Meal-Pot o' Beans (Kidney)

I am looking forward to LifeAsMom’s Meatless Meals recipe swap today. Our family goes meatless several dinners a week for a few reasons:

• Organic meat is very expensive, and it’s cost prohibitive to eat very much of it very often.
• Animal protein is one nutrient that most people don’t lack in their diet, so reducing (not eliminating) meat intake allows for other nutrients to be included in the diet more often.
• As far as kitchen inventory goes, I often have excess grains, veggies and legumes that need to be the star players in order to get used up.
• Even though both the boys have a full set of teeth now, they haven’t always, and having more meals that include more non animal protein sources was one way to make sure the boys were getting enough protein when they weren’t chewing meat well.

I need to make a disclaimer. This recipe is not vegetarian, it’s meatless. You could easily make it vegetarian by using vegetable stock or water to cook the beans instead of pork loin stock. Although I think you'd be missing a lot of flavor if you use water. A box or two of chicken stock would do fine. (No, the pork loin was not organic; I can’t afford to feed a crowd using organic meat!!)

Pot o' Beans (Red Kidney)
Six cups of water/stock
1 lb bag of kidney beans
2 ribs of celery sliced thin
One onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, diced or minced
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp of dried oregano (any dried spice you like is fine).

Rinse and beans, remove discolored ones and put in a stock pot with cooking liquid. Bring to a boil then turn down to med low. Add onions, celery, garlic, SP, oregano and cover. Cook for 2-3 hours or until beans are tender. (I never soak beans, if you prefer to presoak, go for it!) I usually cook beans in the slow cooker, but since I made the stock this morning, I just took half the stock out of my le creuset (5 ½ QT), added the beans to the other half, and cooked on the stove top. You could easily toss all ingredients into the slow cooker in the morning and have a great pot o beans by supper time.

If hubby isn't a fan of meatless meals (like mine), serve with shredded cheese (although that defeats the purpose of saving money on meat, IMO) and hot sauce.

Pork Loin Stock
I usually make stock/broth if I’ve slow roasted something in a pan and it gets bits of yum left all over the pan. I just leave a bit of the meat drippings, fill up the vessel with water and bring back to a boil. I add veggie scraps that I have saved in the fridge or freezer (this time it was the green tops of leeks) and some herbs (fresh rosemary). I use my tongs loaded with veggie scraps to wipe the sides of le creuset clean. I cook meat broth on simmer for a couple hours, veggie stock for 45 minutes. It goes into the freezer for the next pot of beans or soup.

I make a pot of beans every week. Sometimes its chili, sometimes black beans, sometimes white bean soup. This week it was kidney beans. Beans are nutrient dense, and affordable. I like to freeze left-overs in small containers and pull them out for soups, and pasta dishes. Beans are easy to make and home-made taste better and contain far less sodium than canned products. According to Dave Grotto in 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life,

• beans make up 4 of the top 20 antioxidant-containing foods.
  
• Black beans are as rich in anthocyanins as grapes and cranberries.
  

I usually serve beans with rice, but I have buttermilk left over from little boo’s carrot cake, so I made cornbread from Froberg Farm’s locally ground cornmeal. I snagged that at their market the day we picked fresh strawberries.
Kid Appeal Tip If you have kids who don't like beans at first, don't get discouraged. Keep serving them, offer different varieties and in different dishes. There's a big difference between a bowl of beans and rinsed beans with pasta or in a salad. Bean dips are good too, as most kids like to dip. Hummus is great with pita bread and you can puree black or pinto beans on mexican food night and use it for burritos or nacho topping. Make it fun, do a taste test. Before tossing beans in for chili or bean soup, take a spoonful out of each can and let kiddos taste them all. If they don't want to eat them, let the sort by size, color, etc. Sometimes interacting with food when the objective isn't eating helps really averse kids try new things. For a serious bean protester, let them top a little of what ever accompanies the beans (rice, cornbread, salad, pasta) with a tiny serving of beans.

The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that people consume three cups of beans per week. Do you eat three cups of beans per week? If not, I challenge you to increase the bean consumption of your family! You’ll even save money in the process. I hope to find some more bean recipes my family will enjoy on today’s URS over at LifeAsMom.