Meatless Monday: Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burritos

When your body goes into survival mode, low priority bodily functions are put on hold so that all of your energy goes to maintaining life. A household is the same way. Mopping and dusting fall to the wayside when you’re buried alive under 154 boxes. Therefore, I think it’s a healthy sign that last Friday I managed to vacuum, do two loads of laundry, run the dishwasher and cook a healthy and balanced meal. It means that the crisis period is over, and we’re slowly starting to return to our normal daily lives.

Other than getting our King Sized bed set up, my top priority in unpacking was getting the kitchen in working order. When I pulled my crock pot out of the rubble, I was so excited that I kissed it’s porcelain cheek.

Anticipating the impending arrival of my slow cooker, I had already bought the ingredients to make Crockpot Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burritos the previous weekend. I discovered this recipe shortly before leaving Houston, and quickly decided to add it into our usual rotation. It’s so very easy to whip together, absolutely delicious, incredibly healthy, and vegetarian to boot.

Bonus points: Black beans and sweet potatoes are both
considered power foods for runners. And double bonus points: all the ingredients can be easily found in Scottish grocery stores. Rarely do I find a recipe that doesn’t involve me traipsing all over town hunting down supplies.

All you do is cube 2 sweet potatoes, rinse and drain two cans of black beans, throw them into a crock pot with ¼ cup of vegetable stock, some lime juice, minced garlic, cumin, and ground coriander and cook on high for 3 hours. Once the mixture is a bit mushy, use it to make a burrito, garnished with fresh cilantro, mozzarella cheese, and some lime juice.

Yum, yum, yum. Healthy, healthy, healthy. Easy, easy, easy. Just the trifecta needed to make it onto the starting line-up in my kitchen.

And while I was on a roll, I decided to try my hand at making guacamole for the first time. I used 5-6 avocados, mixed with a drained can of Mexican style Rotel and some Tony Chacherie’s Cajun seasoning. I’ve titled it “Cajun Guacomole’ because I am oh so creative and it was oh so delicious. The only problem is that I made enough to serve a football team, and Jonathan and I couldn’t come close to finishing it before it went bad. I hated to be so wasteful, but I’m excited to have a new dip to bring to parties, especially since Velveeta is so scarce in the UK.

Now that we’ve sorted through all of the boxes in our shipment, I have put all of our food items in a centralized area. It’ll be nice to be able to go “grocery shopping” in our junk room when we’re running low on Rotel, Peanut Butter, Oatmeal, or Camellia red beans. I also have tubs full of household cleaning supplies and beauty products which will hopefully curb our cost of living over the next few months.

Here is a more ‘official’ format of the Crockpot Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burrito Recipe, if you’re into that sort of thing. I adapted it from this source. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
2 Sweet Potatoes
2 Cans of Black Beans drained and rinsed*
¼ cup Vegetable Stock
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons of minced garlic 
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander 
2 Tablespoons of lime juice
Fresh cilantro (garnish) 
Shredded Mozzarella Cheese (garnish) 
1 Lime (garnish) 
Burrito Tortillas  

Directions:
Cut Sweet Potatoes into 1 inch cubes
Rinse and Drain black beans
Combine Sweet Potatoes, Black Beans, Minced Garlic, Cumin, Coriander, Lime Juice and Vegetable Stock into crock pot and cook on high for 3 hours.
To serve, put mixture in center of burrito, adding mozzarella cheese, fresh cilantro, and fresh lime juice for toppings. Fold like an envelope and enjoy.

*Original recipe called for 2 potatoes and 1 can of black beans, but we liked the ratio better as 2 and 2.