Frugal Food Series--Beans

Jenn over at Frugal Upstate is in week three of her Frugal Food Series. She has done a week all about eggs and all about tuna! This week, it is all about beans!

For the last two weeks, I was able to share with certainty things that my family enjoys and I fix on occasion. However, this week is a little different, I think most of my family would rather go hungry than to eat beans! Personally, I love beans, esp. homemade baked beans or beans and cornbread but I don’t fix these any more because my family refuses to eat them.

I still put kidney or pinto beans in chili and every time I fix it there are several that request to remove the beans after their required amount of bites with beans! Little do they know that I have pureed some of the beans into the sauce of the chili while it was simmering all day. Just in case you are wondering how much beans I puree for my chili....I use one 15 oz can of kidney beans in my pot of chili....I puree 1/2 the can with water(not the syrupy stuff that is in the can of beans) and the rest of the can I just dump in the pot. The pureed beans are in place of tomato paste in the pot of chili, because the pureed beans will thicken the sauce!

I have made homemade refried beans for using with and in taco meat and those have even been met with the family resistance.

Has anyone been success with getting their "meat and potatoes" family eating beans?? Have any tips to send my way, other than pureeing them?

Anyway, I began to think that with my inexperience and my family’s resistance with beans that I would sit out this week and enjoy reading everyone else’s recipes.

However, I feel compelled to share something about beans!

So I am going to link you to one of my favorite recipe/cooking sites, Hillbilly Housewife and her page of bean recipes. I have tried other of her recipes but none of the bean ones, I would love to hear from anyone that has tried her bean recipes! Maybe I can find some kind of bean recipe that my family will not resist!