Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit...

When I go shopping and I find a great steal on a fabulous piece of clothing, I just can't keep it to myself. If I wear my awesome sale find and someone compliments me, I actually cannot just smile and say, "Thanks!". I get completely overcome with pride for my thriftiness, and usually blurt out something like, "Oh, thanks, it was only $3 on the clearance rack at Macy's, can you believe it??!!" (and, I say it really fast, too, like I only have 2-3 seconds to convince the listener what a great steal I really did find...).

Which brings me to the beans. I use alot of beans...my bean medley recipe alone takes 5 cans. I'm, unfortunately for those close to me, not the most organized person. My pantry supply dwindled without my noticing, and last week I completely ran out of beans...not even one can of chickpeas to be found. Shoot. And the thought of buying a large quantity of cans in the grocery store (shopping, transporting, unpacking...yuck) was super unappealing.

I buy lots of my often-used foods in bulk, so I did a quick search on the internet and I found that I can order a CASE (12 cans!) of Eden Organic beans for $19.98 on their website. Even with shipping costs factored in, my bean order cost me $2.08/can. Compare that to the $3-$4 cost in the grocery stores around here....STEAL!

Here's my six cases (a year's worth?) of beans...$2, can you believe it?! :)

PS-I chose Eden's canned beans because their bean cans are not lined with BPA, as many canned products are....

Spring is Really Here!!

Hello, friends. I'm back. Please forgive my complete and total lack of posting these days. I've been very busy with lots of things. :)

First, now that it's finally nice Spring weather, I've been using almost all my free time to get my gardens going. We added this garden area to our yard last year, and it was almost completely empty at the start of Spring:

Thanks to all the local gardeners selling their perennials at garage sales, and friends for sharing plants, it's actually looking like a garden!

My little vegetable garden is in, too...I don't have much, but it's a start.

I plan to go a bit bigger each year. This year between my raised box and the garden area, we have lettuce, grape tomatoes, dill (mmm, makes my mouth water!), sweet marjoram, rosemary, basil, kale, leeks, and rhubarb. I'm really loving working in the dirt...there is something so satisfying about seeing your own veggies grow.

And, of course, the other primary things keeping me busy....

Which brings me to the food part of this post...I hate cooking lately. I really, really don't want to cook dinner each day. I want to play outside and soak up every minute of these sweet girls because they are getting so big so fast. I got a book from the library of quick dinners in hopes of finding some super easy meals to cook, without much luck yet. Here is my best recipe that meets the easy, fast, healthy criteria that I want these days. It's one of Alaina's favorites, and it makes a big enough batch that we had it almost every night last week.

Please share---what are your get-dinner-on-the-table-quick meals???

Slow Cooked Bean Medley

Mix in the crockpot...

1 1/2 c. ketchup

1 med. onion, chopped

1/2 c. packed brown sugar/honey

1/2 c. water

1/2 c. italian dressing

2 bay leaves

1 tbsp. cider vinegar

1 tsp. ground mustard

1/8 tsp. pepper

Drain and rinse...

1 can kidney beans

1 can black eyed peas

1 can great northern beans

1 can corn/equal amount frozen

1 can chick peas

1 can black beans

**you can use any beans you like, or multiple cans of one type, as long as the quantities add up to the same

Add beans to sauce in crockpot and stir to coat.

Cook on low 5-7 hours, or high 3-4 hours, until onions are tender.

Discard bay leaves.

Serve over rice/noodles/couscous/quinoa