Kidney Bean and Prune Stew

Ewww, prunes!

They totally get a bad rap.  Other dried fruits are fine, but prunes?  Only old people and babies eat them, amiright?

Naw, I eat them, too.  Well actually, I don’t.  But I did.  I had this recipe in the back of my head for a while.  It came from a Heart of the Matter roundup a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to make it.  Except I never really have prunes hanging around.  But I went out shopping, saw prunes, and decided to purchase a box and make this recipe.

I dunno, something about kidney beans and prunes cooked in a spicy tomato sauce sounds strangely appealing to me.  And it was strangely delicious.  It’s not so totally weird, I think prunes show up a bit in Middle Eastern stews and things.  But usually with some sort of weird meat.  No weird meat here. 

Ingredients!

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1/2 tsp. cumin

1 tsp sriracha or some chopped up fresh chili pepper

15 oz. can of kidney beans

14 1/2 oz. can of diced tomatoes

2 tsp. tomato paste

1/2 cup pitted prunes, cut in half

1/3 cup water

cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper to taste

Directions!

Heat the oil in a large skillet or pot over medium heat.  Add in the onion and saute until it’s browned.  Add in the garlic, cumin and sriracha and cook another minute or so.  Add in the mushrooms and cook another minute or so.

Dump in the rest of the ingredients other than the seasonings and bring it to a boil.  Once it’s all bubbling, turn the heat down to low, cover it and let it simmer for a half hour or so.  Then taste it and add what you need to add.  The prunes are gonna make things a bit sweet, so I added a nice, hefty shake of cayenne.  Cook a little bit longer and eat!

I ate mine over barley.  I had leftovers for lunch just by itself.  Like any stew, it’s much more tasty the next day.  Mm, leftovers!

I was very happy with the results! 

But what should I do with all these left over prunes?

- Ellen

Farmer’s Market Couscous Salad

I do not trust Brenna around seasonings. You know what she does with herbs and spices?

Terrorism.

She also just does things that scare me. The other night we made popcorn and she says, “You know what would go good in this popcorn? Cinnamon and cranberries.” My sanity teetered on the brink of uh insanity for a minute. Then she did it and it was good, but I still felt like there was something wrong with the world.

That’s actually a bad example, now that I read it. Though I was coming from a mindset of SALT AND SOME FORM OF OIL. Her weird combinations usually involve something like ground mustard.

Okay, I’m rambling. Anyhow, the Ithaca Farmers Market is open now so we went. I did not see a single farmer for sale! (Ba dum bum tish!) Pickings were slim. I bought some kale. Brenna wanted to buy some stuff and make food with it and she ended up walking away with chives and lemon thyme. After brainstorming ingredients (I think chickpeas was my only contribution) we got the rest at Wegman’s.

Let me editorialize for a minute. I kind of mislike the Ithaca Farmers Market. Most farmers markets you go to and buy directly from the farmer, putting money directly into their pockets, cutting out the middle man, and saving you money. Ithaca? Not so. Farmers Market prices are more expensive than grocery store prices. Now, I can’t blame the farmers. Ithaca has a substantial yuppie-hippie population that loves to do things like buy organic and local and all that, so the demand is there. Farmers can jack their prices. But still, the result is that I tend not to go there as a result.

So, couscous salad: I’m going to try to recreate the recipe the best that I can, but since Brenna did most of the thinking and I just chopped veggies it might be off.

Ingredients!

2 cups couscous

1 15 oz. can chickpeas

1 cucumber, chopped

1 tomato, chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

juice of 1 lemon

chives and lemon thyme chopped up and added – I’m not sure of the measurements but maybe half a cup of each?

salt to taste

Directions!

Cook your couscous. Let it chill. Then mix in all the other stuff. Blam!

I might have added some olive oil to this mix, and afterwards Brenna said she wished she’d picked up an orange bell pepper. That might have been good. But still, this was really great. The lemon thyme was badass. I’d never even heard of the stuff.

-Bret