Refried bean quesadilla & vinegar peppers

Am I the only one that loves beans? Beans glorious beans. Dried beans, canned beans, fresh beans. Black beans, kidney beans, canellini beans, chick peas (I consider these a bean!), refried beans. I have many cans and bags of beans in my cabinet (leftover hurricane supplies) and I am so lucky that my regular grocery store, Harris Teeter, now carries their HT Natural organic store brand, so they are more cost effective on a tight budget.

I am still counting Weight Watchers points and I was starving today as I didn't really eat dinner last night since I had to go for a SCUBA refresher course in order to dive with the dive operation that the Disney Cruise uses. Since I haven't done any diving since I started having children I had to go and spend 2 hours in the pool with a dive instructor going over the basics of SCUBA diving. It was fun but I did not bring my wet suit and only had on a thin skin suit and by the end of the evening I was freezing in the 82 degree water. Oh back to me being starving.

I am looking in my kitchen for something to eat for lunch and still have tortillas and I had a small amount of lowfat cheese and then the can of refried beans started calling me. Linda how about us! We would be great on a quesadilla! So I caved in. I opened the can of refried beans, could have just eaten the whole can of beans for lunch but I am sure my stomach would have been yelling at me later! I put the tortilla in the hot pan and put the cheese on it, I should have spread the beans on it like peanut butter as I think it would have been smoother and cleaner, but I put some refried beans and then about 2 tablespoons of low fat organic ground beef that I browned the other night and then I put 3 vinegar peppers, didn't have a jalapenos.

It was soooo good. Creamy and gooey and healthy. A very filling lunch (I didn't eat the whole thing!) and I imagine I won't have to eat again all day but since I am trying a new recipe for dinner I guess I will force myself later on!

Now on to the vinegar peppers. I was reading one of my favorite blogs by Judy at No Fear Entertaining and she mentioned that before she had met her husband she had never had rice and gravy and that Jenn The Leftover Queen had never had it as well. I confess. Before I met my southern husband I had never had rice and gravy. I actually had never had white rice except with Chinese food. We were Italian. We never ate rice. It was a real treat about once a year we got Rice A Roni (the San Francisco treat - can't say that product without the song coming into my head which is why I think we thought we liked it as kids) which in all honesty is not really rice. So if I do make rice it is a must to make gravy.

I digress, the other southern thing that my husband must always have is vinegar and peppers. He eats them with everything. Every year we grow peppers and every year he sticks them in vinegar and then eats from the jars all year! He even eats them with my Italian food. But they are actually very tasty. I use them instead of jalapenos (although last year we grew jalapenos and I miss them this year :-() in some recipes and if we are having Mexican inspired food I will eat them. It truly is simple.

Vinegar Peppers

Clean the peppers

Place peppers in a large top jar (so you can get them out easily)

cover with vinegar

Place in pantry for a few weeks so that they can soak up the vinegar and then start eating them. Once we start eating them I place ours in the refrigerator. Not sure why as vinegar is not refrigerated but it just seems right.

Now with stick to your ribs healthy food Life is Good!