Today I was trying to think of something different to have for lunch. I don’t know about you, but it seems like I eat the same things day in and day out. They’re easy to fix and not much thinking has to go into what I am going to make. I buy the same foods, make the same grocery lists, eat the same things. What a rut! Boring! Therefore, I went to my pantry today to find whatever I was or wasn’t looking for and I saw these 3 cans of beans: green beans, garbanzo beans, and kidney beans. Ta-Da! Since I like vinegar-type dressings and think of bean salad as being old-fashioned, I decided to look in my mom’s cookbook for a recipe. All those recipes had way too much sugar for me, so I did some experimenting of my own. Here’s the recipe I came up with:
SIMPLE 3 BEAN SALAD
3 cans of beans, your choice
2 tsp sugar
½ cup hot water
½ cup white vinegar
2 tsp olive oil
1 ½ tsp dried onion
In a small bowl, combine dried onion with 1 ½ TBSP of warm water, stir and set aside. Dissolve the sugar in the ½ cup of hot water. Set aside to cool. Drain all the cans of beans and rinse using a colander. Dump all the beans in a 1 ½ quart bowl. In a medium bowl combine the cooled sugar/water mixture, vinegar, oil, and softened dried onion. (You will notice the dried onion absorbed most of the water.) Add salt and pepper to taste. I also added some Original Mrs. Dash; however, you can add any spices that you personally like and it will taste just fine! Stir all ingredients together, cover and chill in the refrigerator for an hour, but I couldn’t wait that long and it tasted great anyway!
Give this recipe a try. Feel free to tweak it any way you desire. Some of the best recipes come from experiments! ENJOY!!!