Red Beans and Rice Deluxe with Spinach Salad and Balsamic Dressing

“Resolution” is sort of a strong word.  So, I’m going with “good intention.”  It’s my good intention to try one new healthy recipe a week, serve it to my family, take pictures of it and post it here.  So, here we go!

I love beans and rice together, and so does most of my family.  Thing is, most beans and rice recipes involve some sort of sausage product.  I don’t do sausage, so I went on the hunt for a good vegetarian version, preferably for my crockpot.  I found Red Beans and Rice Deluxe at Healthy.Betterrecipes.com.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 cloves garlic

1 medium yellow onion

3 leeks

1 medium green pepper

2 medium white potatoes (I used red potatoes, because I had them on hand)

1 cup baby carrots

2 15-ounce cans kidney beans, rinsed and drained

4 cups vegetable broth (I used chicken broth, which technically makes this non-vegetarian.  But I love the flavor of chicken broth.)

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

3 cups brown rice, cooked

Tabasco sauce, optional

Directions:

Heat oil in crock pot on high. Using garlic press, crush cloves directly into crock pot (I finely chopped them). Stir and allow to simmer while chopping remaining vegetables. Chop onion into large chunks (I chopped small, hoping my kids wouldn’t pick them out). Stir onion into crock pot. Slice white ends of leeks into 1/4 inch rounds, discarding green tops. Stir into crock pot. Chop green pepper into large chunks and stir into crock pot (Like the onions, I chopped small). Chop potatoes into eight pieces each, leaving skins on.
Add potatoes, carrots, kidney beans, broth, chili powder, salt and pepper to crock pot.

Stir all ingredients together well. Cover and cook until potatoes are done all the way through, about 3 hours on high or 6 hours on low. Cook rice according to instructions on package. Serve red beans over a bed of rice, accompanied with Tabasco sauce, if desired.

Serves 6

What We Thought

The onions in this are really over-powering.  If you like a lot of onion, this dish is for you.  Surprisingly though, even my non-onion eating kids liked this.  They, of course, picked out the onions and peppers, even with them cut small, but they ate everything else–and even asked for seconds!  It was very hearty, with the potatoes and carrots, especially.  Perfect for a mid-week, winter dinner.

What I served with it

Even with the all the veggies in the main dish, I still wanted to add a side salad.  I used what I had on hand and came up with this Spinach Salad with Balsamic Dressing.  The salad was simple, yet fabulous. I loved the salty/sweet combo.  It paired perfectly with the Beans and Rice:

Ingredients:

Baby spinach, one handful for each plate

Cut up apples (pears or mandarin oranges would work well, too)

Toasted almonds with a dash of sea salt (I chopped raw almonds and lightly toasted them in a skillet until fragrant)

Balsamic Viniagrette Dressing:

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

1 Tablespoon honey Dijon mustard

1 Teaspoon sugar

1  Teaspoon salt

Wisk together and drizzle over salad