Anasazi Beans With Guacamole

I am always looking for new things to eat that are healthy, inexpensive, gluten free and good tasting. The other day when we were in Parker, I found these Anasazi Beans. I had read about them in cookbooks and on the internet, but I had never seen any in a store. They were more expensive than other kinds of dried beans, about twice as much for a 16 oz bag. I bought them anyway and brought them home.



I couldn't wait to take them out of the bag and take a picure of them. I mean, they are so pretty just sitting there in the pot:




I made bean soup with them, adding some chopped celery, onion, garlic, basil, thyme, and black pepper. I don't usually add any salt to the pot when I am cooking dried beans. It makes them tough and chewy, so we add the salt after they are cooked if they need any. I have always added some sort of meat to the pot when I cook beans, but this time, since we are trying to eat less meat, I did not add any at all. We wanted to see how good dried beans could be with no meat added.



Also, I have found that if you either soak the beans overnight, or put them in a pot with water, bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes, then pour off the water and rinse the beans well, you won't get the flatulence usually associated with eating beans. (It works, believe me, I know it does!)



After you rinse the beans, add them to the crockpot with the other ingredients. I cooked these beans for about 4 hours on high, then turned them off and let them sit overnight in the crockpot. The second day, I turned the crockpot on high and cooked them another two hours. The soup turned out just right. I served it with homemade guacamole spooned on top, and cornbread on the side. The guacamole added just the right amount of mmmmmmmmmm to this soup.


Now isn't that a beautiful bowl of soup?

Bean Soup Weather, Again

The weather here in Pennsylvania has been cool for almost a week now. Today is supposed to be 85, but it is already after one o’clock and it is still only 72 degrees out there. I am loving it, but hope it does warm back up as I really don’t want to have COLD weather yet.

Yesterday I did another version of bean soup, so here it is for you all to enjoy:

1 lb dried white beans (I used cannellini beans)
1 good-sized hunk of salt pork, preferably with some lean in it
3 celery ribs, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the beans for a couple of hours, until they are soft. Add:

1 pkg Bird’s Eye Sugar Snap Stir Fry (sugar snap peas, carrots, onions, mushrooms)
1 large yellow squash, cut up
2 large fresh tomatoes, cut up (peel and seed if you want to, I didn’t)
1 teaspoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon dried basil ( I really like basil)
1 tsp dried oregano

Cook for about an hour longer. This was really good, although I can’t take full credit for the recipe, as there was a recipe for minestrone on the bean package, which I followed very loosely. I just happened to have that package of frozen vegetables in the freezer, and since it had most of the vegetables called for in the original recipe, I dumped them in. My husband, Jim, really like it, too, but he asked for cornbread to go with it. I just doesn’t seem like a cornbread kind of soup to me.