Wonderfully Domestic: Beans

If you have kids, you know just how picky they can be when it comes to what they eat. I have a beautiful two year old and although she likes a lot of different side dishes, she's not so into her veggies :( I have NO idea where she got this because neither my husband nor I have ever met a veggie we didn't like. The one exception for her is BEANS. She loves 'em! Even LIMA beans. Who knew? Anyway, I was paging through a magazine and saw an advertisement for Bush's Beans with recipes when a picture caught my eye.

(click here for more)

I know, I know...it just looks like a big pile of beans. Well, I got to reading and there are veggies hidden in with those beans! I figured it would be worth a try so I went and bought a can of pinto beans (I always have black and kidney beans on hand).

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 small celery stalk, chopped
1 small carrot, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup chopped canned whole tomatoes
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
2 teaspoons white wine
Salt and pepper to taste

Okay, so I didn't have any canned whole tomatoes but I always have these yummy tomatoes from Hunt's on hand. However, I didn't use them. (more on that later)

Chop your veggies (onion, carrots and celery). I chopped them pretty small so they wouldn't take too long to cook and so they wouldn't be so obvious in with those beans.

Heat your oil in a pan set to medium

Add veggies to hot oil

Sautee until the onion starts to get transparent, you can add salt and pepper to taste any time in here. Just remember that canned beans are already kind of salty, you probably don't need to add a lot.

Add your chopped garlic for the last two minutes. This is important because you don't want your garlic to burn as it can really taste bitter. Here I actually tripled the amount of garlic the recipe calls for. Hey - I already told you I LOVE GARLIC!