Cheap bowl eats where have you bean?

By Josh Steiner
Contributing Writer

Welcome despondent readers to the food porn part of the paper wherein I reside; today we will quietly talk bowls, save a penny, count our beans and eat them too…

Finally a bowl that won’t get your business closed…

Winter can aptly be described as TV season, basketball and college football bowl games and the Super Bowl.  I’m also informed that every four years there is something called the Winter Olympics also televised in the winter. Personally I’ve never heard of it. Otherwise winter is an exciting time to get together with your friends and enjoy American sports while ignoring the existence of soccer and stuffing your face with food and drink that may consume you the next day. If you are anything like your humble narrator here, than you will sit down to at least one of the aforementioned events with a steaming bowl of chili but be careful.  Because who knows how the city council will feel if they find out you have a bowl. They might try to close your kitchen, but I digress.  A bowl of chili in my mind is always held in high regard, easy to make, relatively cheap and always a crowd-pleaser.  Unfortunately the cost of meat can add up if you entertain with chili for every winter function.

The price of beans doesn’t add up to…  Well, beans.

Unless you have been living underneath a rock you are well aware of the economic hardships that many Americans have found themselves in.  Couple that with the rising price of EVERYTHING at the grocery store and it could be said that even an economical dish like chili can become prohibitively expensive when serving a bunch of drunken cawledge football fans.  Fortunately you have an economical option when it comes to Tex-Mex.  Seriously, broke reader, you need to look no further than the ubiquitous pinto bean. Pinto beans are an extremely affordable alternative; similar flavors, similar textures, tastes good with cheese, onion, sour cream, soft and hard tortillas.  Sounds a lot like chili right?  Tack on the fact that a pound of dry beans comes in south of $1.50, you are now talking value.  I don’t know about you, illustrious reader, but I got no beef with a crock-pot so I’m going to go plug it in.

This is e-z bake oven, brothers and sisters. First step: soak your beans overnight in water, rinse thoroughly and strain.  Then put your beans in a crock-pot, followed by 32 ounces of chicken stock (I prefer low sodium), 2 cups of pico de gallo (recipe for pico can be found on my blog page in thepeoplespressproject.org) or substitute two jars of salsa, but the pico is worth the extra effort.  Toss in a packet of taco seasoning and wait.  Wanna add bacon or ½ a beer like you do in chili?  Do it.

Waiting is the hardest part…

Just like the poet/philosopher Tom Petty foresaw—we wait and it’s hard while the aromas waft from our crock-pots and swirl maddeningly throughout our domiciles… we continue to wait.  We are waiting for about 7 hours while the crock does its thing on high for 8 hours.  Eventually we will have to stir in more stock, water or beer to add more moisture and avoid stickage.  Continue to stir and once the beans are no longer hard we are good to go. Serve with tortilla chips, garnish with cheese and sour cream, and make bean burritos or serve them in bowls (just don’t invite the sheriff) with plenty of hot sauce. As you can see, my expedient readers, the sky is the limit. Whatever your imagination can dream up for these beans, I’m sure it will meet your cawledge bowl game cuisine expectations.  Turns out cheap bowl eats have bean here all along…

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