Sunday, November 7, 2010

Baked Falafel and Beans and Rice

I love beans. Falafel is basically beans. My fave recipe (truly, only one I've tried) is from Vegan with a Vengeance. This week I decided to bake them instead of fry them, and they turned out great!

Last night was beans and rice. Last week's "bean of the week" was garbanzo (hence the falafel. and hummus. and stew with chickpeas). This week is black beans. I cooked up a pound. And some of them are destined to be bean burgers. Eventually.

As I've decided to try and lose those 8 lbs I've gained since I've stopped running (dang 40 year old knee!!), I've been measuring out...everything. Ya know? That takes about 20-30 minutes a day. It's a good deal of work, almost like a part time job. Especially at first.

Anyway, this pretty picture has 1/2 cup of mexican-inspired brown rice (cooked brown rice, stir-fried with onion, garlic, peas, cumin, parsley, oregano, and tomato), 1/2 cup black beans, diced tomatoes, diced avocado, low-fat cheddar, light sour cream, TJ's garlic chipotle salsa, and some chopped cooked frozen veggies (broccoli, carrot, cauliflower). It was a huge plate for not a lot of calories. Which is good.

And the ingredients are all pretty cheap. For example, I prepared all of this:
6 cups cooked black beans: $1.29 (one lb dried)
3 cups cooked brown rice: $0.47 (one cup uncooked)
1 tomato: 0.50
1 avocado: 1.00
2 oz lowfat cheddar: 0.75
6 tbsp sour cream: 0.32
1/2 c. salsa: 0.75
onion: 0.30 for one
garlic: 0.15 for 3 cloves
frozen veggies: 1.02 per lb
frozen peas: 1.09 per lb

And we've got a bunch of leftovers.

3 comments:

j. said...

I dunno about the mixed veggies, but the rest of that black bean plate looks amazing.

And the falafel, yum! I'll have to hunt down/ try that recipe. Always looking for one that really works.

Marcia said...

The mixed veggies are fine! I'm always looking for a way to fit in veggies without adding too much fat. They taste pretty good with all this stuff.

Otherwise, I toss in olive oil, but that adds more calories. Which I don't need more of.

Biz said...

That looks delicious! I made falafels, but I fried them - they turned out really good though!

http://mybizzykitchen.com/2010/05/03/wonderful-weekend/

Happy Monday!