Monday, August 12 White Rice and Black Beans, Salad Rating: 4.25

One of the advantages of meal planning is that we can be sure to have leftovers for lunches throughout the week. I typically plan meals that will keep well and reheat easily, so that means beans and rice are usually on order the first of the week. Vegan Eats World is one of my favorite cookbooks, and we love this recipe. It’s really very simple and basic, but so flavorful. I like to use dried beans that I’ve soaked and cooked, but canned are fine here too. We had a bunch of green Italian peppers from the giant CSA pickup last week, so I used some of those in place of the green bell pepper it calls for. The rest is really just seasoning and leaving it along to cook. I really just wanted something simple to go with this, so I made a quick salad. We had some ranch dressing (Cookin’ Crunk) on hand and the cool creaminess of it was a perfect pairing with the Latin flavor of the beans & rice. Easy peasy.