Red Beans and Rice and Sweet Potato Enchiladas

When Kay and I travelled to Belize I felt like I could eat the Red Beans and Rice as often as the locals there do.  We travelled there before I stopped eating animal products, so it was often slopped over chicken, and I am pretty sure they used chicken broth for the rice and/or beans, so I am trying to come up with a vegan version.  Well if my first foray into red beans is any indicator of whether vegan red beans are going to be good I have no worries.  I used a recipe I got online at a site called Budget Bytes called just Vegan Red Beans and Rice.  Making beans can be intimidating, but is really easy and the only time consuming thing is being around to stir the pot occasionally and not forgetting that it’s on the stove.  I don’t have a slow cooker, but suspect this could easily be made in one.  I had planned to serve these beans with rice, but Kay was excited about making a new enchilada recipe so we used some of the beans with her recipe.  At the last minute we invited Kay’s sister Mary, Jim and it was a big hit.  I can’t wait to use the left over beans with rice as planned.

Kay substituted my red beans for the black beans in her first try at a new recipe called called “Sweet Potto & Black Bean Enchiladas with Avacado-Cilantro Cream Sauce” from  Angela Liddon’s  “The Oh How She Glows Cookbook: Over 100 Vegan Recipes to Glow from the Inside Out” that she got for her birthday from her church girl friends.  It is really cool that Sue and Ed, church friends, have adopted a largely vegan diet, Ed is I think fully vegan, and Ed has lost a huge amount of weight and looks fabulous. He is the primary cook in the family and his suggestions for recipes have been really inspirational.