Baked Beans and Roasted Cauliflower

This time the BAKED BEANS turned out fine. I soaked too many navy beans, and my pressure cooker was so full I decided to just boil them for two hours. At that point the beans I was going to use to make the baked beans were done enough. The remainder I pressure cooked for another twenty minutes to make sure they were soft enough. They can be used in a soup in the next couple of days. My enormous amounts aren't necessary for smaller, less hungry families, so I will give a recipe that fits into normally sized cookware and stomachs.

Ingredients

2 cups — dried navy beans

8 cups — water to soak, then more water to cover the beans after pouring it off

1/3 cup — maple syrup or agave

1 Tblsp. — molasses

1 — chopped onion

1 cup — tomato sauce

1/2 tsp — salt

1/2 tsp — tamari

1 tsp — dry mustard powder or heaping tsp of wet mustard

1/2 tsp — garlic powder or fresh minced garlic

1/8 cup — olive oil

1 cup — water, optional if too dry-looking

 

Method

Soak two cups of navy beans in four times as much water overnight. In the morning, pour off all the water. This will get rid of a lot of the oligosaccharides that cause problems with the digestion of beans. Add fresh water into the pot with the beans, covering them with a few inches to spare. Pressure cook them for forty-five minutes once the pressure cooker reaches pressure, or cook them at a low boil for two hours, adding water if it cooks away. The beans might still not be totally soft, but that's okay because now comes the baking.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. In a large covered pot, like a casserole, stir together a third of a cup of maple syrup or agave syrup and a tablespoon of molasses, a chopped onion, a cup or so of tomato sauce, a half teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon of tamari, either a teaspoon of dry mustard powder, or a heaping teaspoon of your favorite wet mustard, a half teaspoon of garlic powder, and about an eighth of a cup of olive oil. Add in the cooked navy beans and mix it all together. It should look like beans with a lot of liquid around them. Add in a cup of water if it doesn't look wet enough. Otherwise the beans won't soften.

Cover the pot and bake for two hours. Uncover the pot and bake for one more hour. The beans should be just right. If they are too dry, you could always add some water and heat them up again, and they will still taste good.

What to Serve the Beans With — Roasted Cauliflower

I made garlic bread out of slices of my sourdough bread, and ROASTED CAULIFLOWER using the recipe from the Laptop Lunches cookbook. 

 

Ingredients

2 heads — cauliflower, broken into pieces

1/4 cup — olive oil

1 tsp — turmeric

1/4 tsp — garlic powder

Sprinkle — salt 

1/2 Tblsp. — tamari

1/4 tsp — red pepper 

Method

Wash and break into pieces two heads of cauliflower. Mix together a quarter cup of olive oil, a teaspoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a sprinkle of salt and half a tablespoon of tamari, and a quarter teaspoon of red pepper. Pour over cauliflower and mix it all around. Spread it out on a cookie sheet and roast at 450F degrees for twenty-five minutes. This turns out cauliflower that is better tasting than any other I have eaten. I cooked the garlic bread at the same time, and both of these after the beans came out of the oven.

Canned vegetarian baked beans have always been a favorite with my boys, but it is a lot cheaper to make them from scratch, especially in the quantities given here. I haven't tried freezing some for another time, because they always eat them up in a few days, but you could.