I made this the day after I made Sweet and Sour Green Beans. It was a great leftover recipe! As with all recipes using leftovers, make sure the leftovers are not too old and have been stored properly. Food poisoning is not what you want to achieve when trying not to waste food!leftovers from Sweet and Sour Green Beans
1 can garbanzo beans (chick peas)
1 can dark red kidney beans
1/3 C finely chopped green pepper
olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, sweetener
Drain both cans of beans. Toss together the leftover green beans, drained beans, and green pepper. Then use your judgment and taste buds and dress the salad with the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and some sort of sweetener, such as honey, raw sugar, or whatever you like.
**A note about sweetening foods - the mass media being what it is, and having the agenda that is does, we have gotten a little crazy with our fear of using any sugar at all. And the harm of using artificial sweeteners is becoming more obvious all the time. But one of the secrets in experienced kitchens, is that many things have just a little sweetener added to enhance all the other flavors, or even provide a balance to something with vinegar for instance. If you look at the labels of many purchased foods, like spaghetti sauce, you'll see really high amounts of sugar and especially the harmful high fructose corn syrup. So when you're at home, a teaspoon or so of sweetener in a whole batch of soup, or chili, or sauce, is not going to hurt anything - unless you have some medical reason for avoiding it of course! There are good choices of natural sweeteners out there too, like sucanat and raw sugars, some of which have a lower glycemic index than processed sugars. The glycemic index measures how quickly the sugar affects the insulin levels in your blood stream, which affects so many other things - read up on it. However, one slice of pasty white bread has a higher glycemic index than does a whole tablespoon of plain old, processed, white sugar!! So throw out the white bread with fear and trembling, but go ahead and add a little sweetener to your cuisine when it needs it - it's a cook's secret you'll be glad you learned!
