Red Beans and Rice

Red beans and rice. It doesn't sound like much, does it? But it actually makes a pretty decent, fast, and inexpensive meal. Especially because it's more than just red beans and rice. This recipe, from the Faster! I'm Starving! cookbook, includes white rice, prosciutto, olive oil, red beans, can of ready-cut tomatoes, thyme, and parsley. You're also supposed to use an onion and bottled crushed garlic. I just used some onion powder and garlic powder. (The recipe also calls for hot sauce, but I left that out.)

As I'm typing this, I realized that I used more red beans than I needed, but oh well! LOL

It might seem like there are a lot of ingredients, but it doesn't make it expensive. We actually already had the rice, tomatoes, olive oil, thyme, and parsley. All I needed to buy were the red beans (on sale) and prosciutto. The prosciutto was the most expensive thing in this meal!

The way I made this recipe, it's naturally gluten-free. I double-checked the prosciutto to make sure it was safe, and it was. This recipe is from a cookbook, so because of copyright reasons I can't share it with you here, but it's not hard to figure out how to make this on your own. (Or just leave me a comment on this post and I'll share the recipe with you.)

The next time I make this, I think I am going to add some sausage. My husband really felt like it needed something more, and the cookbook recommends adding a cup of cooked chicken, ham, pork or sausage to make the dish more substantial. So sausage it is!

Now, do you think I should do smoked sausage or Italian sausage? I asked my husband for his input and all he said was "sausage!"