Since Annika chose on her own to be a vegetarian for the first two years of her life, I found all kinds of yummy meatless dishes. Beans and rice together are a great protein; adding certain veggies that aren’t accepted unless well hidden make it even better! Kids as young as three can help with most of this recipe which makes it even more fun, although then it’s a little harder to sneak in those tomatoes and peppers. It’s still great without them.

Ready

• Black beans
• Tomatoes (optional)
• Green peppers (optional)
• Brown rice
• Sour cream
• Grated cheese

Set

• Two sauce pans

Go

For the rice

1. In one of the sauce pans, cook the brown rice.

For the beans

1. Put one can of black beans into the other sauce pan
2. Add chopped tomatoes and green peppers
3. Cook for as long as you like, 5 minutes to 30 minutes

To assemble

1. Place rice in the bottom of the bowl
2. Place the beans on top (the key is much more beans than rice)
3. Sprinkle grated cheese all over it
4. Place a hefty dollop of sour cream on top

On the side

1. Steamed carrots or broccoli with hummus or a simple cheese quesadilla are great.

What you should know

For the rice, we like the boil in the bag brown rice. Healthy, yummy and fast.

In Latin America, pots of beans are often cooked for hours; it brings out the flavors of the ingredients. In this dish, the longer you cook the beans, the less recognizable the peppers and tomatoes are, which is great for those kids not so keen on these veggies. If you are making this dish for adults not afraid of spice, you can start with stir frying onions and garlic and adding spicy peppers to the beans. Really yummy.

Once the food is assembled in the bowl, you can let the kids decide if they want to mix it all up into a heavenly goo or not. Annika and AJ seem to like it all mixed up.