White Beans with Tomato and Rosemary over Garlic Spinach with One-Hour Dinner Rolls

Sunday, January 5

White Beans with Tomato and Rosemary over Garlic Spinach with One-Hour Dinner Rolls

Rating: 3.75

Seth got me an e-reader for Christmas (squee!) and I love it. I’ve been resisting this trend for years now, as I'm a bit of a “real” book purist (working in the print industry for 20 years will do that to you). Of course, being a bit of a pack rat, and also a complete bookworm has left me with way too many books to fit in my books case and limited living space in which to put more book cases. (Although I am eyeballing a corner in the bedroom that could fit a smalli-ish one.) Anyway, my book hoarding habit extends to cookbooks, and I’m out of space in the kitchen for those, too. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about using a device for cooking – it’s hard enough when I use the laptop for recipes I find on-line. See, I’m a bit of a messy - and somewhat clumsy - cook. I’ve glued countless pages of cookbooks together with who knows what kind of drips and smears, spilled the beer I was supposed to be putting into a marinade on a book, and set one book on fire. Literally. On. Fire. So, you can understand why I’m nervous with electronics in the kitchen. Plus, my hands are always wet and scrolling on a touch screen is dicey with wet hands. Anyway, I’d had my eye on The Great Vegan Bean Book for a while now. We love beans and I’m always looking for new ways to make them, especially recipes involving lots of veggies. I read something the other day about no one needed another recipe for a bean, a green and a grain, but I really do. So, I went ahead and downloaded the book and immediately found a ton of recipes I wanted to try. Since Seth was back in town, I could get back to cooking for two again. I decided to try the recipe for White Beans with Tomatoes and Rosemary. It sounded really good, and we love all three of the main ingredients. It was very easy to make and quite tasty, but I rated it a little lower because it came out pretty dry. I expected the tomatoes to add more moisture and create more of a sauce than they did. I mashed up some of the beans in an attempt to get them to mix with the tomato juices, but it didn’t help that much. I’ll probably make it again, but will add some veggie broth to it. Also, it makes more of a side dish portion, rather than a main, so there really wasn’t as much left over for lunches as I’d hoped there would be. I didn’t use a recipe for the spinach – I just sautéed it in some olive oil and pressed a whole bunch of garlic cloves into it, let that cook for a bit and then added some salt & pepper. It was pretty good – can’t really go wrong with spinach and garlic. I was going to make some French bread, but we were short on time, so I went with a one-hour dinner roll recipe my sister made at Christmas. They were really soft and fluffy and really only take one hour to make. I did a half batch since 24 rolls seemed like a bit much for just the two of us. I think they may have been my favorite part of the meal. Then again, fresh, fluffy bread is always my favorite.