Beans! and January menu ideas

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I have THE best husband ever! Why? Well for a million awesome reasons, but today it's because he got me THE BEST PRESENT ever for Christmas... :D  An electric pressure cooker!  This thing is truly amazing and I haven't even used it that much yet!

One reason why I really wanted this "new toy" is to cook the 75 pounds of dry beans I now have stored in my pantry. :)  I have many reasons for wanting to learn to cook beans.  One is to learn to use my food storage, second to eat better and third because it's cheap eating!

One of my goals is to start replacing white rice and pasta in our menus with beans.  This could prove tricky and I will try not to do it all at once, but I think it's definitely possible.  The electric pressure cooker will help for sure because it takes the work out of cooking the beans.

My oldest daughter is not a great meat eater.  She really doesn't care for it.  However, we do make her eat it because she hasn't found a protein replacement besides peanut butter that she likes.  One of the first things I cooked up was a few cups of pinto beans.  I cooked 2 dry cups of pinto beans with 3 pieces of bacon cut up.  It took less than an hour and they were super yummy.  We heated a bowl up in the microwave with some cheese and she devoured them.  Yay!

So here are some other ideas I would like to try.  Most of the recipies I'm finding will not work exactly as they are but I plan to tweak them to my liking and be able to make them in the pressure cooker.  I'll post how I tweak them and what worked and what didn't.

Northern beans and sausage

Crockpot bean soup

Slow cooker pinto beans

Pinto Bean Cassoulet

Beefy rice and bean casserole

Pork, Sweet Potato and black beans - I don't think I will use this recipe because the microwave instructions are odd to me, however, I like the idea of the flavors and combination.

Refried beans

Cola black bean soup

Mexican lasagna

Some great ideas I think! I'll be back to post my menu plans when I get them done.  I am having a late start this month...







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