Good Day,
If you are vegan or if you just follow a plant based food diet, chances are you eat a lot of beans, or legumes as they are called. We eat a lot of beans now-on salads, in dips, stir fries, soups, baked beans and sometimes even in cookies and cakes and such. Yes, there are great recipes out there for dessert made with beans.
Exhibit A: Chickpea Cookies
Now, if you are familiar with beans and their many talents, food wise, you will know that you don’t necessarily need a recipe to make a delicious meal using beans. They are very forgiving, very tasty and let’s not forget nutritious and low in calories. The only legumes that I am not crazy about are mung beans. Just don’t like them-yet!!
I really prefer, for several reasons, to use beans that I have cooked from dried (but that is another post):
1. no added salt
2. organic dried beans are much less expensive than organic canned beans
3.firm texture that I prefer for most recipes, except dips.
But I do keep canned beans on hand for convenience and I do use them. I don’t buy the canned organic. They are just too expensive for me. I don’t use canned beans all that often, I am not worried about using the non-organic.
This is one of the times when I do use canned beans. I am getting ready to go for Spring Break. I am joining my daughter and her family for a week of fun and maybe some rest. So, I am busy getting ready-you know, researching and writing posts, cooking for said posts, and hopefully preparing some food for my daughter to put in her freezer.
Out come the canned beans. I tried this great recipe from FatFree Vegan Kitchen.
It is a super simple recipe, kid friendly if you leave out some of the spicy spice and it freezes well.
Of course, I made a few changes, albeit minor, some for taste and some for convenience.
Assembled Ingredients with 2 medium instead of large onions, cause that is what I had and two apples instead of one, because I am making this for my grand-chiblets and they like sweet things.
Chopped onion sautéing in a little bit of veggie broth to avoid scorching the onions
Yellow pepper(use any colour you have on hand). Cut into thin lengthwise slices and cut crosswise into a rough dice
I washed the organic apples well and left on the peel for added nutrition and colour. Quarter the apples, core each quarter and dice as with pepper.
Yellow pepper and white onion in the pan-so pretty
I used a teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder to replace the garlic cloves I was too lazy to chop- eight garlic cloves-Sheesh!
Add some green apple to the yellow and white.
One and a half cups each of navy and black and chickpeas-but truthfully, you can use any mix you like. Notice there are no mung beans-they even sound yucky!!!
All together now–one, two, three!!
Tomato sauce and remaining ingredients except dates.
Add the dates last, so they don’t clump up around the blade.
Whir till you get this and…
add to main mixture. Season with salt and pepper.
Voila!- ready for the freezer- to be thawed and baked at a later date.