Bean experiment gone awry….

As we get closer to another move, it’s time to start cleaning out the fridge. I had bags and bags of random beans from this recipe and that recipe. What to do with all these beans?

All the beans...

I decided to cook them the same way I cook the pintos and see how it turned out. It couldn’t be that different, right?

How I cooked it:

Pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans and black-eyed peas—about 3 cups worth. I threw them in the crock pot with 8 cups of water, a turkey neck and a red onion and a white one I found in the fridge. I planned to turn them off in 8 hours at 10:00 p.m. Oh, but then I fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until 8 the next morning….

Not my best outcome.

I woke to the strong smell of beans. It was Sunday morning and as Matt tried to pry my eyeballs open, I remembered. I jumped out of bed and ran to the crock pot.

“How are they?” Matt called out.
“Mush, they’re mush,” I cried.

What do you do with mushy beans–besides pour them into a glass of milk and stuff pieces of white bread in with them? That was a childhood memory I must have made up. Mom says it never happened. How about making bean burritos instead?

How we fixed it:

We placed the beans in the food processor and made a creamy bean paste. The black-eyed pea must have been the strongest because that’s mainly what I tasted but Matt didn’t. And whose opinion counts more—the cook or the one who eats what the cook makes?

We had everything for the bean burritos, except tortillas. We looked up recipes for whole wheat tortillas and realized we had all the ingredients. Too lazy to go to the store, we decided to make those too. We grabbed the recipe off cooks.com recipe search. They were so easy to make, I decided I’d never buy tortillas again.

End Result:

We added cheese, salsa and sour cream. They were so lip-smacking, Matt complained I was taking too long to take the pictures, and ate it while I clicked. There are a few bites missing from the pictures!

They turned out fantastic. So, if you ever fall asleep and don’t turn the beans off, don’t fret. They can be salvaged! (and consumed happily!) Wouldn’t recommend that with just anything in the crock pot, though! I lucked out on that one, ha!

What you’ll need:

2 cups of any beans

6 cups of water

1 ham hock or turkey neck

an onion or two

a food processor

tortillas

sour cream

salsa

cheese (cheddar or Mexican)

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