Red Beans and Rice, Music Office Style

This has been a busy week, so I cannot write anything profound. Thus, a recipe:

Needed:
- small Rice Cooker
- Rice, either Brown or White: 1 "cup"(see note below)
- Dried Soup Vegetables: ½ cup
- Can of Red or Pinto Beans, or similar amount of leftover "home-cooked" beans
- Cajun Seasoning to taste (I use one or two Teaspoons)
- Water
- Cooking Oil: about 1 Tablespoon

By one "cup" of rice, I mean one Rice Cooker "cup," which is 6 ounces, or three-quarters of a standard U.S. measuring cup -- and, very conveniently, one good-sized serving. Such a measuring cup supposedly comes with a rice cooker when you purchase it; the three cookers I have owned are all from thrift stores, and did not have the cups. I take a regular measuring cup and fill it about three-quarters full. One need not be exact.

Dried Soup Vegetables are handy to keep around. They can be purchased in the bulk food section of our local natural foods cooperative. If not available where you live, you can order them from Frontier Natural Products, which is the source from which our cooperative gets them.

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Put the rice and dried vegetables in the rice cooker. Add the cooking oil. Add water as appropriate for your rice cooker, probably an inch or so above the level of the rice/vegetable mixture, a bit more if you are using brown rice. If you have time, you can let the rice and vegetables soak for a while before cooking; I prepared it to here before Matins this morning and left it to soak until after the late Eucharist.

Plug in the cooker, and cook the rice. Have ready the can of beans. When the rice cooker clicks off from "cook" to "warm," stir in the beans and cajun seasoning, stirring to the bottom of the cooker pan (with a wooden spoon to avoid scratching the cooker). Put the lid back on and let it set on "warm" for fifteen minutes or more. Unplug the cooker and serve.

Serves one hungry person (me, on a Sunday after church. I fixed it today in my office as I worked on next Sunday's bulletins).