Soup and Beans and Low-Meat Meals

Today we begin the long trek home from Grand Teton National Park. It is so sad to say goodbye to these beautiful mountains, but it will be wonderful to get back home. My bloggy friend Kristen from milo and molly is taking over the blog today while we make our way back home. And to you, dear friends, I will see you sometime next week after our three day driving fest comes to an end.

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Hello, lovely Row House 14 readers!  I'm Kristen and I am a stay-at-home mom of two and owner of the Etsy shop milo and molly, where I sell paper goods and sewn gifts, and I also keep a blog by the same name where I chronicle our never-ending house projects, shop stuff, recipes, sewing projects and the like.

 
On my blog recently I posted a plea for low-on-meat or meatless recipes.  You see, we are a meat-loving family, but in an effort to trim the fat (ha ha) from the budget and eat a little lighter, I'm trying to gather recipes using more beans, lentils, pasta, and so on.  I had some wonderful comments left, recipe links tweeted to me, and one lone soul used my link-up (thanks, everyone!).

I decided I wanted to update my readers on some of the recipes I tried, and then I got a really great idea, and then Heidi said she was going on vacation and would I like to guest-post, to which of course I said yes, and so I thought that this might be just the right place to share my idea while also begging for more recipes.

So, first an update on what I've made:

One recipe suggested by Paige was Ham and White Beans done in the slow cooker.  I have grown to love my slow cooker.  We are on the type of schedule where we decide to run to Home Depot or some other house-related errand at four o'clock in the afternoon, getting us home right when we should be eating.  With the slow cooker, dinner is pretty much made and I can just serve it up.  Time saver, sanity saver.  This meal was delicious and I highly recommend it.  Notes: I did not have a ham bone.  I used a half a pound of cut up deli-sliced ham instead and it was just fine.  I also added asparagus so vegetables would already be included, and because I'm not great with cooking asparagus so I figured the slow cooker would take care of that (it did).

I've decided I'm not cooking beans any other way.  My hubs loves real beans, as in a bag of dried ones and not the already cooked ones in a can.  I actually like them better too, and they're better for you, but you have to plan ahead for them by soaking them overnight and then they need to cook the day of generally between 1-2 hours.  Since dinner planning around here often occurs at dinnertime, real beans doesn't always work.  I'm telling you, all you do is put your beans in the slow cooker, cover them with 4-6 cups of water and let them go for 8 hours on low.  Talk about set it and forget it.

I also made this Food Network favorite, which yields plenty of leftovers.  I always serve it with prosciutto bread, which is probably the reason we like the soup so much in the first place.  The photo below is from the reboot lunch the next day because I totally forgot to snap a shot that evening.  As you can see, no bread in sight.  They're both so easy and so good, and this soup is packed with veggies.

I saved all the recipe suggestions plus some others I've found on two new Pinterest boards: Slow Cooker and Soup and Beans, which is actually more than just soup and beans but I liked how it matched the name of the original post.  This is when I got my great idea.  I would love to make those two Pinterest boards collective boards, shared by us all to pin for the common good of busy people who want to slow cook their beans or eat a lot of soup.  If you make something, you can leave a comment on the pin and tell us all how it went.  Fun, right?

If you'd like access to the board, please comment with your Pinterest user name and I'll add you on as a pinner!  (I think that's how it goes.  I haven't made a collective board yet.)  The only rule is no deleting a recipe that's been posted.  If you're more comfortable, feel free to e-mail me at milomollyshop (at) gmail (dot) com.  If you have a recipe to share, please post a link in the comments, or tell me what it's made of, or come by my post and comment or link-up.

Thanks for hanging out with me today, and I hope you'll come by and visit!

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