Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Cheap Eats

On Monday night I realized that I had been slacking on bringing my lunch with me and decided to make something that would take me through a couple of lunches.

The easiest vehicle for that is my Crock Pot! I am trying to save money, be healthy and NOT spend a lot of time cooking during the week. Out come the beans.

I order my beans through the mail from Rancho Gordo, and no they are not magic beans. They also do not get buried in the back yard where they are expected to sprout a bean stalk and take me up to a giant.

They are DARN GOOD BEANS though! I used marrow beans this time - the whole 1 lb. bag.


My method for Beans:
Rinse beans in a colander
Place in bottom of a crock pot
Add roughly chopped celery on top of beans
Add roughly chopped onion on top of beans
Add roughly chopped carrots on top of beans
Add 5 smashed garlic cloves on top of beans
Ad 1 tsp of whole peppercorns on top of beans
Add water to cover beans by about 1 inch
Set crock pot to low for 8 hours

The reason I add the veggies on top of the beans is to "weigh" the beans down as much as possible before the water is added so that the beans won't float up too much.

I set this to cook at 10pm. When I woke up in the morning (the final time, not 12am when I was woken up to take the big monkey to the ER) I had a healthy, nutritious, cheap and easy lunch to take to work.

I just put the beans in a container and topped with some of the carrots and bean broth. At work, I added some hot sauce and dug in! I think this would also make a great "base" stew - just added shredded meat, other veggies for the last hour of cooking, or right before you reheat.

This makes QUITE a lot of beans. The cost of the dish was $5 for the pound of beans (although you can find dried beans most place for under $2), about $.25 for the 2 stalks of organic celery, about $.20 for the 2 organic carrots, $.20 for the 1 onion and $.10 for the 5 cloves of garlic.

For $5.75 have at least 3 lunches and a couple of bags of beans to use as parts of other recipes.

Who says good, filling food has to be expensive?

7 comments:

kel said...

You thrifty lady, you!! Sounds good!

Unknown said...

Sounds yummy! I couldn't help but notice though, the lady on the front of the package trying to seduce the consumer. Kinda creepy

Kim said...

I LOVE beans, bean soup, beans and rice, etc. etc.

Opus #6 said...

I LOVE my crock pot. Yummy!

Julia@SometimesLucid said...

dizz - Check out the other "art" on the website. It's pretty funny :)

Kel - I try to be thrifty, but I also like GOOD food (hence $5 for a lb of beans).

Jo - Are you about to start singing the bean song??

Opus - I'm sure with your big family you use the crockpot quite alot. Do you also us it during Shabbot?

Unknown said...

Always looking for new ways to eat beans (my family loves them). Thanks!

La Mom-an American Mom in Paris said...

Good for you, bad for me. That much beans would make me well, "Beans beans the musical fruit..."