Mmmm....Yum!

For Mr. Potts & my Valentine's Day dinner, I wanted to try something new that I'd never made before. He enjoyed the Osso Buco that I made recently & I thought that another dish using the braising technique would be good.

So for Valentine's Day dinner, Mr. Potts & I feasted on Beer Braised Short Ribs with braised vegetables. Oh so yum! This was a recipe I had spotted in Cooking Light a while back & it turned out to be a great dinner for us. As always, I made some modifications, but you'll find the basic recipe here.

Picture via Cooking Light.

Now, Mr. Potts is very much a meat & potatoes man. Most of our meals contain some sort of meat, but I've been trying to cut down on the amount that we use/consume.

Finding Joy in My Kitchen had a wonderful Red Pepper Tortellini Bake that I had been itching to try for a while.

I changed the recipe up a bit - used low-fat fresh ravioli & reduced fat Italian cheese, but overall kept everything else the same. It turned out wonderfully last night & Mr. Potts wants this to be a repeat.

Picture via Finding Joy in My Kitchen

Now, normally, I'd take pictures of all of this myself, but I somehow seem to have misplaced my camera!!

I need to find it for dinner tonight - it is Fat Tuesday & I'm making Red Beans & Rice again to celebrate with a few friends.

A little red beans & rice

I have not been the best at posting pictures of the dinners I make. I have been taking the pictures, I just forget to download them into my laptop. I'm going to rectify that this evening. I've taken pictures of the butternut squash soup & fontina "grilled" cheese, the chile chicken bake, etc. So come back this evening for some pictures of the yummy foods I've been crafting.

Having lived in New Orleans for a while I had the opportunity to have wonderful red beans and rice, but had never tried to make it myself. My thought was that if someone's mother was going to invite me over to eat hers, it would rude to not go - right? Plus, there were several, um, restaurants that served some of the best around.

Mr. Potts has always professed to a love of red beans and rice, but had never had it from New Orleans. On our first trip there, that was our mission - to get him some authentic red beans & rice. We hit the motherload! We definitely had the best I've ever had! Since that trip, he understands my aversion to variations from our area. It just isn't even close.

Since Fat Tuesday is coming soon (February 24th), I decided that I needed to find a fabulous red beans and rice recipe so that we could enjoy it then. I found a version in one of my new cookbooks and was eager to try it, although it was quite a bastardized version. It turned out wonderful! We both were so happy with how it turned out & considered going back for seconds - even though we weren't still hungry - we loved how yummy it was!!

So, if you're interested in an easy Red Beans & Rice recipe, here it is. I also used andouille sausage (both a chicken & a regular kind to taste test the difference in the two).

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 (3-ounce) chicken andouille sausage links, chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt-free Cajun seasoning - I used a dash of this instead of 1.5 tspn
  
• 3 (15-ounce) cans red beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 4 cups hot cooked long-grain rice

Preparation

1. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausage to pan. Continue to turn using tongs until cooked through.

2. In a medium pot combine beans, 1/2 cup water, cajun seasoning and tomatoes to pan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in pepper. Serve over rice.

Oh yum!!