veg baked beans
Apologies for the brief hiatus! My photo editing software decided it wouldn’t work until I upgraded to the latest version, which meant buying and waiting for it to ship, blah, blah, blah! But it’s here and installed and working beautifully thus far so… on with the show!
One of the ways I keep our mixed vegetarian-omnivore marriage in check at dinner time is to balance the tofu/tempeh/seitan type dishes with meat-like foods. At least once per week, I try to cook a meal that hubby can really relate to as a meat eater, even though I prepare it in a vegetarian or vegan way.
A couple weekends ago, my in-laws served up traditional baked beans at an outdoor birthday party. Although I abstained, hubby was in heaven eating his mother’s homemade recipe. When I spied the “Calico Beans” recipe on Vegweb.com recently, it sounded like a great vegetarian version and I knew hubby would love this dish.
I just didn’t know HOW much he’d love it. When he realized what I had made for dinner–yes, I made only the baked beans, nothing else!–he practically ran me over to get to the crock! Turns out, he had been craving the beans all week after eating them at the party and these vegetarian baked beans hit the spot. The only modification I made to the original recipe was using two cans of the veg baked beans and only one can regular beans. And, I cooked this in the crockpot instead of the oven, slow cooking it for an hour or two until heated through before serving. I’m hoping we’ll be invited to at least one more barbecue before summer ends; I’d love to try this recipe on a whole crowd of omnivores!
