Potato-Bean Casserole

Start with the simplest of ingredients: a potato (boiled) and an onion (sauted).

Rebecca watched with interest as I chopped and stirred...

Yum!

We have called this simple dish "2 J Casserole" for quite some time in my family -- mainly because Jake and I, Jamie, (2 Js) created this vegan dish back in 1999. Jake was living in D.C. for a semester; I came up to visit him for Thanksgiving weekend and we created this by experimentation. And it stuck.

Ingredients:

-- 3-4 potatoes
-- half a can of tomato sauce
-- 1 can of garbanzo beans (I use the low-sodium variety)
-- 3 small tomatoes
-- a yellow onion
-- a few T of olive oil
-- Morningstar tofu crumbles (you might use Quorn crumbles if you tire of Morningstar, as I sometimes do)
-- a dash of spices (This time I used rosemary, marjoram, and basil)

It's a hearty winter dish -- first you dice and saute your onion in olive oil while you boil your potatoes (I cut mine up in chunks first). Then you add the beans and sliced tomatoes to the onion mixture, then the sauce and tofu, and then finally the drained boiled potatoes and your spices. You might also have added a few sliced carrots when you added your tomatoes and beans - we used to do that but I'm all out of carrots. Also, this is the kind of dish that tastes even better the second day - all the juices and spices have been keeping each other company for a bit and it's even more savory.

Enjoy! And check out all the nutrients in the humble potato:)

One last thing - as I attempt to cook these days in between feeding and playing with Rebecca and trying to get her to nap (combined with some working from home), I'm realizing that some of my old favorite recipes like mushroom empanadas and flatbreads were pretty time consuming. Now I'm looking for recipes that are vegetarian and fairly fast. So I'll be going through my cook books and this blog archive to find some dishes that fit for our family at this point -- let me know if you have some good ones and I'll try them!