Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Healthy and Cheap

A year ago I started a food storage project setting up three pantries - an A pantry (for active) a B pantry (this was my back up) and a C pantry where I packaged up all sorts of things for long term storage - C meaning "crisis."


I'm pleased with the A, B, C system (which was my husband's idea) and it's working for our family.

The initial "investment" of food was costly and to reduce my cost I purchased bulk beans - by bulk I means pounds and pounds and pounds of beans like lentils, red beans, and pinto beans. I have pounds and pounds of other kinds of beans too - all stored in those white food storage buckets.

Since pinto beans tend to be the "cheapest" to buy and are often on sale, I have many of those "white food storage buckets" full of pinto beans and therefore, I'm always on the look out for some new ways to cook - uh, pinto beans. So, I'd love your favorite way recipes posted and linked back here.

Because of the activity here at the Cactus Road Farm with folks coming in and out, I've found it necessary to keep a pot of beans or a pot of soup going and available at all times. I'd break my food budget were I to serve something else and besides, how great is soup at this time of year?

Today, the Home Depot Guy is coming back to help my husband finish up the chicken coop and since I didn't want to serve yesterday's soup with the base of kidney beans, I thought something with pinto beans would change it up.

Cooks.com has this recipe for a Pinto Bean soup which is slowly cooking on the stove now.

1 lb pinto beans, smal jar of salsa, 1 large onion, 1 tb of vinegar, 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp of salt.

Rinse and sort beans - cover them with water in a large soup pot and bring to a boil. simmer for 2 minutes and remove from the heat. Let the beans stand for 1 hour. Add remaining ingredients and more water to cover. Bring it to a boil and simmer for 1.5 - 2 hours. Serve with warm cornbread and honey.

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3 comments:

Quiet Mom said...

Great post! Always looking for good and cheap stuff that's healthy too!

Do you put anything in your food buckets to keep bugs out?

Lori said...

I really like the ABC idea. Gonna talk with Hubs about that one... Where do you get the food buckets you referred to?

Donna said...

Ummm...sounds yummy! Tell us more about this pantry system...I wanna know!