Rice Bowl and a New Cat Toy

Last night we ran out to the health food store and Wegman’s before coming home to a late dinner (after 9pm). As I expected we both came in the door starving. Needless to say I didn’t measure and document the recipe from last night, so I will be giving you the method instead with rough measurements.

I make something that I call rice bowls for dinner when I don’t want anything fancy. They are wonderful quick meals because they use things that are in the refrigerator. Earlier in the day I had cooked a cup of brown basmati rice and stored it in the refrigerator for this evening. Rice and black beans became the base of the meal. Here is what I did.

Water sauté half an onion, thinly sliced, three garlic cloves minced and ½ inch of fresh minced ginger. When the aromatics are soft add a thinly sliced red bell pepper and a hand full of snow peas (about a cup). After two minutes I added the cold rice I cooked earlier and about a cup and a half of cooked beans for protein. I also added liquid aminos (you can use low sodium soy sauce) and mirin and cooked until everything was warm. Turn off the heat and add about 1/4 cup thinly cut kelp and sliced green onions to the mixture and stir to combine. The residual heat will be enough to warm both the kelp and onions. Serve with fresh minced cilantro. This makes 4 servings at our house.

Since the rice and beans were cooked and in the refrigerator this meal took 15 minutes and 10 of those were spent waiting for the allicin to develop in the garlic before cooking it. While the garlic was standing I had time to clean and slice the other veggies. Any vegetables will work in this dish, as will any beans although adzuki are my favorites in this.

Even though this is very similar to the beans and rice dish we had a couple of days ago with queso it tastes very different due to the seasonings. This is how I like to use “leftovers” in a way that makes them a different meal but doesn’t require a lot of work from the chef.

Unrelated note:

While we were out last night we bought this adorable squeaky toy for the felines. We always buy them something when we see it. My hubby decided to give it to them this morning when all three of them are wake and active. The first few minutes they were really adorable with the toy. Then I realized what we had inadvertently done. This squeaky little toy is the feline equivalent of buying your children a drum set. It is cute and they love it but it has a motion sensor and as long as they are playing with it, it is squeaking. I will be hiding this at night so they don’t decide to play with it in the bedroom while we are trying to sleep.

As for a review, three very enthusiastic paws up from the feline members of the family. The humans are glad the cats are happy, but find the squeaking to be a tad annoying. Our two thumbs up are much less enthusiastic.

No exciting plans for today. I have some soy beans soaking for soy milk later today. Laloofah has been encouraging me to make Bryanna’s okara miso pate so I want to try that today or tomorrow. Figuring out twitter is also on my short to do list. I think I need to spend a few days following what other people do and hopefullly then it will make sense. For the moment it is a bit of mystery. If anyone wants to share any tips on twitter please feel free to comment here or send me an email. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated.

For now it is time to work on crossing some items off my to do list. I will be back later with a post, or two. I hope you are all having a wonderful day