Yin Yang Vegetarian Rice and Beans

Though I gave up eating meat about six months ago, I was still eating a lot of unhealthy foods. A little under a month ago I decided to really buckle down and take a hard look at what I was putting into my body. Sure I had no meat and almost zero dairy or eggs, but I will still eating a lot of sugar, and a lot of refined carbs.

There were a few factors that pushed me into this new healthy eating, which I’ll cover in another blog, but what matters is that in the 28 days or so since I gave us everything that was bad for me, I’ve lost 12 pounds! Since I’ve still got quite a bit more to lose, and since everything I’m making is vegetarian, probably even vegan if I’m honest about it, I wanted to share some of my recipes that have made my new lifestyle fun, and a lot more enjoyable than my standard white bread. fake bologna sandwich with chips that I called healthy before.

I’m always on Pinterest and the Internet scouting out new recipes so I want to give some back.

Today’s recipe was inspired by something I saw online, but except for two ingredients (black rice and hazelnuts) and the overall concept, mine is completely different.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup uncooked black rice (I bought this in a bulk bin at Sprouts and got about 2 cups for $3)
• 1/2 cup hazelnuts (also bought from the bulk bins and found inexpensive for the small amount I needed)
• 1 can white cannellini beans, washed and drained
• jar of roasted red peppers (I used about 1/4 cup of peppers plus 1/2 cup of the juice)
• 1 tsp of juice from a jar of capers
• 1/2 teaspoon roasted pepper and garlic seasoning
• 1/2 vegetable broth for the rice, about 1/4 cup for the beans
• Water
• avocado for garnish (optional)

The steps-

Soak the rice in a glass or metal dish. The rice will emit a purple dye and this may stain a plastic container. I soaked it for a few minutes then rinsed it several times in a strainer.

Drain the rice and add it to the rice cooker with 1 cup of water and a 1/2 cup of vegetable broth. Hit the Brown Rice button. If you don’t have a Brown Rice button, I read that 25 minutes should do it.

Meanwhile, add the hazelnuts to a food processor and turn it on while adding small amounts of water until it’s creamy. I ran into an issue here because it was a small amount of nuts and my machine didn’t cream it well but did chop. I added about 1/4 cup of water but this can vary so add a little at a time. Ideally this will be like a nut butter.

When the rice is done, mix the creamed nuts to the rice. It needed more flavor so I added the teaspoon of caper juice to it. That did the trick for me but feel free to add other flavors. For me, this was just the right amount of saltiness to meld the nuts and black rice. Set this mixture aside.

Rinse the beans under the sink and add to a food processor. I added a half cup of juice from the roasted red pepper jar.  It still needed something so I went though my spices and found roasted pepper and garlic seasoning. I added a 1/2 teaspoon. That brought everything together but it was still not right. I finally chopped up 1/4 cup of the red pepper from the jar and added that in. Perfect!

With all my flavors exactly how I wanted them, I shaped them into the Yin Yang symbol. I didn’t use all the rice mixture, maybe about 2/3 of it, but I can eat the rest another time. You could probably use it all so long as the shape doesn’t lose its integrity. I know the colors are off (not black and white) but it was flavorful and pretty. I used a shot glass to make a perfect circle in a piece of pepper, and a slice of avocado for the other side, as shown.

This made a delicious dinner which even my vegetable resistant boyfriend tried and enjoyed.

Happy healthy eating!