While one ideal of economy is to plan all of your meals and only buy the exact amounts you will need for each dish, my grocery shopping style often results in random extras of items found on sale. My husband and I, having been vegetarians for 14 years before adding meat back into our diet, still can't help ourselves when we see cans of beans on sale and often find ourselves buying a can of each type. As a result, beans always seem to remain in our pantry when the rest of the food is almost gone.
Back in the 30's and 40's, the frugal wisdom of the time was to always buy your beans dry. Unfortunately, this is one of those instances where the wisdom of our grandmothers no longer works because the world has changed. While a cost comparison does show that dried beans are a few cents cheaper than canned, the cost difference at the market averages out to only 2-3 cents per ounce. When you factor in the time that dried beans need to be cooked on the stove and the increased cost of the gas and electricity used to heat that stove, there is really no difference between canned and dried beans in terms of price. Not to mention that time is money…so, really, the canned beans are the cheaper alternative as long as you buy generic brands on sale.
Why all this talk about beans? Well, it could be just because they are a cheap and healthy food item that is a staple in the diet of any family struggling to make ends meet... but there is more! This is a story of a night where I made myself proud and my family's bellies full:
I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner with the few scraps we had left in our pantry and fridge. It was almost time to visit the grocery store, but I was determined to put this task off and use what we had on hand… Surely I could throw something together! I went to our pantry and saw that we were all out of veggies, but we still had our ridiculous stash of canned beans. I looked through our fridge and noticed some turnip greens from the day before that had not gone over well with the little one and was unlikely to get eaten in its current state. We also had a very tiny - as my husband had said when I finished my bagel the other day, "…barely enough to even bother saving" (Ha!) - amount of cream cheese left in its wrapper, some parmesan sprinkles, and a block of cheddar.
I started pulling out the random items I had found in the fridge and added to this three cans of beans: black, kidney, and lima. I started some rice (another staple that always seems to still be standing when the rest of the food is gone) in our rice steamer and began creating a makeshift casserole:
On the bottom layer, I mixed the black and kidney beans (making sure to save the liquids from the cans for stock). I covered them with some fresh cilantro leaves my mother-in-law had given me recently and some of my favorite spices (cumin, thyme, and garlic powder). I then added a layer of shredded cheddar. The next layer was created by melting the cream cheese in the microwave just long enough to make it soft for mixing. This I mixed with the turnip greens and lima beans to make the third layer, which I covered in more fresh cilantro and spices. Finally, I covered it all in another layer of cheddar with a thin layer of parmesan on top and baked it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. The end result was the most delish beans and rice any of us had ever tasted. My husband said it tasted kind of like the pizza he'd been craving all week and my daughter, who is four and by the nature of her age a picky eater, gobbled it all up with nary a complaint! With a family of three, we ended up with about half the casserole left over. Tomorrow, we're going to be having it over baked potatoes. Yum!
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