Fajita Burritos with "Traditional" Refried Beans

So I'm a little bit behind in my food posts as things were a bit hectic this past week.

We had a really good, albeit short, trip to St. Louis. My dad's graduation ceremony was held at the Missouri History Museum. It was a lovely ceremony with a good keynote speaker. It was also really nice to see my grandparents from Houston, we don't get to see them enough. After the ceremony, we had a nice lunch and looked around the St. Louis Art Museum for awhile. I will post some St. Louis pictures at the end of this post.

Onto the food. As you all know, Brett and I love Mexican food, it might go beyond love, but that is beside the point. :-) Anyways, we have been trying to get a good refried bean recipe down for a couple of years. Our beans have always turned out well, but they were also always more flavorful than authentic refried beans, and something always seemed a bit off. I did a little research and experimented, and have come up with the most 'authentic' recipe for vegan refried beans we've had yet.

Brett also made a good portion of this meal. I made the beans, he made the marinade, cut up all the veggies, and marinated them for the day. When I got home from work to make the meal, all I had to do was sauté the veggies and heat up the beans. Gotta love meals like that!

'Traditional' Vegan Refried Beans

1 cup of dry pinto beans, soaked overnight and rinsed

1 serrano pepper, stem removed

1 jalapeno pepper, stem removed

1/2 medium onion (or equivalent)

1/2 bulb of garlic, peeled

2-3 tbsp vegetable (or other) oil

1-2 tbsp salt (in water)

In a crock pot, combine all the ingredients and fill the pot with water. Simmer on high for 2-3 hours or until beans are soft. (You could also do this in a pot on the stove.)

Reserve about half a cup of the bean water.

Remove the peppers, garlic, and onion, and discard.

Mash beans with a mixer or potato masher, adding bean water and salt as needed to taste.

Fajita Burrito with Refried Beans

2 red bell peppers, seeded and sliced

1/2 red onion, sliced

1 package white button mushrooms, sliced

Just Another Fajita Marinade

refried beans

tortillas

salsa

Marinate the veggies in Just Another Fajita Marinade for at least a couple of hours.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add the veggies and cook for about 15 minutes or until soft. You may want to put a lid on the pan (if you have one) to help them cook faster.

Layer refried beans and marinated veggies in warmed tortillas and roll 'em up! Serve with salsa.

We both really like this mariade, it works really well with fajita style veggies.

I'll end this post with a few pictures from the History Museum St. Louis. Unfortunately, none of them will be of my dad's graduation. For one, the lighting was difficult for our camera and we didn't get many good pictures. And for two, well, I didn't ask him if he minded living in infamy on my blog, so I didn't think it would be fair to post the pictures without asking him first.

Anyways.....

I really have a thing with public transportation, so I was excited to take a picture of one of the Metro buses in St. Louis.

The Missouri History Museum. You can actually see my family walking up towards it.

Old trolly car.

Good 'ol TJ.

These posters are from 1943. I don't think we should have ever lost these principles.

And finally, they have an exhibit at the Museum where you can stand behind this thing that looks like the basket of a hot air ballon and the TV shows you 'flying' over St. Louis, seeing the arch, all that sort of stuff. It's a pretty silly, kitchy thing, but I thought it would be fun to take a picture of it 'flying' us over St. Louis. See the Arch in the background. It felt so real...... ;-)

I will try to get back on this afternoon and post the weekly garden update, and will try to catch up on everyone's blog soon!

'Til next time.

Things That Make You Go "Aw"

This is not a food post, nor is it a rant. I just had a few pictures I thought I'd share.

You see, at least in my opinion, there often isn't much to smile about in the world these days. So I relish any opportunity I have to enjoy the 'small things' in life. I came home from work yesterday to find that Brett had taken some very cute (and very good) pictures of the cats that really made me smile.

They even made me smile again when I attached them to this post. Since I enjoyed these pictures so much, I thought I'd share them with others, maybe brighten someone's days a little bit.

Gabby watching a bird.

Gabby and Nermal cuddling (and our dirty carpet).

Nermal.

A good up-close picture of Gabby.

Nermal's fat, soft belly.

Gabby looking really cute while sleeping.

Nermal looking very wise.

Gabby.

Nermal, looking like she's about ready to say something, as usual....

I really like this picture of Gabby. Brett proves that our camera doesn't suck, I am just not very good at taking pictures apparently.

I love it when they smile!

Gabby is a funny cat.

And finally, my favorite of all these pictures, Nermal's little toes curled while she sleeps. :-)

I wanted to end with a note: I forgot to mention in the last garden update that I will not be posting a CSA round-up this weekend. My Dad went back to school for his MBA, and I am going to be in St. Louis this weekend to see him graduate! A friend of ours will be enjoying our weekly CSA.

'Til next time!

Garden Update #11

The gardens are finally really starting to move along. We've actually had a few days reprieve from rain (I say this as rain clouds are moving in.), and lots of sunshine.

We also seem to have found an effective remedy for the aphids. After trying three different natural concoctions, we've found that a mixture of boiled crushed garlic and cayenne pepper is not only effective against aphids, but also truly safe for the plants.

I forgot to mention that we harvested the chard a few weeks ago, it was yummy.

The wind was cooperating with me this morning, so I finally got some decent garden pictures for the first time in a few weeks.

Check out the container garden:



















































The broccoli, still going strong. I'm worried that they may be underpotted or something. They still aren't producing and I'm afraid it's going to be too hot soon.















Hungarian Wax Pepper. This thing is flippin' huge!















Banana pepper, the plant is finally growing, for awhile, it seemed as though it was expending all its enegy on growing this one pepper.















Jalapeno pepper.



















Cayenne peppers. I hope you can tell in this picture that this thing is going nuts! There are six or seven large peppers growing right now.



























A couple pictures of the serrano pepper. It's really growing like crazy right now too, last count we had nine little peppers starting.















Tons of flowers on the 'Super Chile'.

Onto the community garden. I was hoping that the hay would help keep down on the weeds, but there were still tons of weeds, what they hay does do is make the weeds harder to pull.

All in all things are going well. I wish I knew more though, such as which bugs are beneficial and which are pests, as we have an assortment of critters in both the container and community garden. I know at least some of our visitors are 'pests', as they have had made a few meals out of our leaves. I also wish I knew why other people's plants are so much farther along than ours, perhaps it is what they are fertilizing their plants with, it could be that our plot sucks. You see, we didn't really think much about what plot we chose, and we ended up chosing possibly the worst plot there was, the one that gets the runoff from everyone else's plots.

Speaking of other people's plants, check out these guys, they are some plants in other plots. It not only illustrates how much further their plants are than ours, but also how cute baby vegetables are.

These yellow squash are almost ready to be picked!

Onto to this weeks CSA and farmer's market booty.















This weeks CSA includes: beets, broccoli, collard greens, onions, spinach, spearmint, and leaf lettuce.

Farmer's market booty: We've got local cherries (these are a special treat, they don't last long and aren't always available, a splurge and a very exciting find!), organic spinach (I love Phil's Phine Greens, Phil is a local purveyor of greens and they are phine :-), he has some of the best stuff around), cucumber, lots of little tomatoes, and snow peas.

As noted above, we got some beets in our CSA this week. Now I like beets, but have never bought them fresh before, so I wasn't sure how to store them. After a little searching online, I found out not only how to store them, but that beet greens are edible and incredibly nutritious. Since I had been planning on discarding the greens anyway, I decided to try eating them. I looked around for a recipe and modified it to our tastes. It was pretty good, the greens are sweet and taste, well, an awful lot like beets.

Sautéed Beet Greens
2-3 cups of beet greens, washed and chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 tsp organic sugar
a few shakes of crushed red pepper
a few splashes of malt vinegar

Heat a few tablespoons of water in a small skillet. Add the greens and the garlic and cook for about 8 minutes.

Stir in the sugar, crushed red pepper, and vinegar. Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

This made a nice lunch side dish, it was surprisingly tasty, and I will never waste beet greens now that I know what to do with them!

'Til next time!