Friday Night Burritos

Wednesday night is Bean Night at our house. All day long, my Crock Pot simmers beans, they are hot, tasty and tender when we arrive home in the evening. I throw a pan of brown rice in the oven, make myself busy for an hour, throw together a salad and supper is ready at 6:00. It is a beautiful thing. We really love beans, usually we have pintos, blacks or kidneys. Bean Night, however, is a tradition in our young family for several reasons. First, financial. A bag of beans, a cup of rice, some chopped onion, a few cloves of garlic, assorted seasonings, well under five dollars and it feeds the whole family and then some. We usually have a salad of some sort or some kind of vegetable, possibly left over from the night before. It is an exceptionally healthful meal, which is another reason we choose it. Now I love meat, mind you, but I realize it is not as good for me as I want it to be. Bean night helps me cut down, without making any sacrifices.

On to Burrito Night. On Friday afternoon, the beans and rice from Wednesday come back out of the icebox and go into a large pan or deep skillet. If we have meat left over from Thursday, maybe the remains of a roasted chicken, or slices of London Broil perhaps. On a good week, we will have leftover pot roast, that's the best. That meat goes right into the pan with the beans and rice. If there is no meat, sometimes I will brown up a bit of ground beef or venison, but not always. I add chopped onions and peppers, fresh if I have them, but sometimes frozen, and pour in a can of Ro-Tel. That is the base for our burritos. I season them with various things such as more garlic, chili powder, Tabasco maybe thyme or a bay leaf, whatever suits my mood. I like to moisten it up as well, so I will add broth, salsa, tomato sauce or even a can of V-8 Juice. Sometimes I throw in a handful of frozen corn which adds a certain crunchy sweet zippiness. The whole mess simmers for a while until the flavors have blended.

At supper time I warm up tortillas, put hot sauce, salsa, cheese and sour cream on the table and we are ready to eat. It is a time saver, a money saver and with all the vegetables and brown rice, it is really good for you. We like Friday Burritos so much that if we don't have leftover beans, we just use canned ones. We love to start our weekend with a one pot supper that takes very little work. Give it a try!