I love rice and beans (many thanks to my mom). I love how healthy it is, delicious and how versatile it is. There are hundreds of different kinds of rice and beans out there that you can easily go weeks with making a different style. I often purchase different kinds of beans each week to liven up my dishes. In my cupboard I had a can of black eyed peas. As I was looking at them I remembered that during my dietetic internship I made a black-eyed pea casserole for a nursing home event. It was super easy to make, nutritious and delicious, so black-eyed pea casserole is on the menu!

First I put up some brown rice. I used water, a packet of sazon and onions.

When the rice was half cooked I added about 2 T of olive oil. It helps to make it creamy!

While that was cooking I sauteed some frozen edamame and a small cut up sweet potato in a separate cast iron skillet. I did this mainly to defrost the edamame (extra protein).

Once the rice was cooked I added it to the edamame and sweet potato mixture.

Topped it off with a sliced green pepper.

Topped that off with black eyed peas

Topped that off with some shredded cheddar cheese.

Have to wait 27 seconds to put it in the oven because cookies are cooking!

These are an easy must make chocolate chip cookie recipe. The extra pennies on real vanilla extract vs immitation vanilla extract are worth it. Trust me

The casserole cooked for 20 minutes and then broiled for 5 minutes.

Doesn’t look much different but the cheese is very melted.

Simple and delicious!

So today I realized that  Dempsey will not eat until Rizzy is completely done eating her bowl.

Weirdo!