Meatless Monday -- Black Beans and Brown Rice

BTW, I love beans.  Don't know when this love developed, but they are my secret favorite food.  So this made for an awesome dinner with leftovers for lunch.  It is essentially Skinny Taste's Cuban Beans and Rice. I doubled her recipe, used brown rice instead of white, and modified my cooking method/times.

Ingredients
1 green pepper, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 small-medium yellow onion, diced
5-6 cloves of garlic, minced
about 2 tbl olive oil
2 cans black beans
4 cups water
1 tsp cumin
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp oregano

Methods
1. I heated up some olive oil in the bottom of my heavy bottomed stock pot and softened up the peppers, onions and garlic.

2. I added the black beans, including the juice, brown rice, and 4 cups of water.  I also added the cumin, oregano, and bay leaves at this point.  I brought the mix to a boil, covered, lowered the temp and simmered until the brown rice was cooked.  At that point I took the lid off and boiled off some of the remining liquids to thicken up the sauce.

Opinions
Still love me some black beans.  This was a win.  Full of fiber and protein between the beans and rice.   I turned this into  servings, and they have been filling. The leftovers made for a good lunch too.  It was also not overtly salty, despite using the bean juice (i'm one of those people who ALWAYS rinses her beans).

I made something similar from Our Best Bites a few weeks ago... It was supposed to have chicken, but i felt the beans gave me enough protein.  that one had a nice apple salsa topping... I would be happy to add in the apples to this and make a nice mix between the two.