Week 24 - Black and White

The Week 24 challenge, black and white, was a repeat of one that I did back in 2017 when I made oden. I love having color in our meals, so I wasn't really that excited about this challenge and considered skipping it, but then decided to just have black and white be one portion of the meal alongside some more colorful items.

The black and white ingredients, purchased and made pre-White House Goya visit

I decided to make black beans and rice, following a simple recipe I found on Allrecipes. In addition to the black beans and rice, we rounded out our summertime meal with some easy BBQ chicken (just canned chicken with store-bought BBQ sauce) and braised vegetables (green beans and carrots). The ingredients for the black and white portion of the meal, as adapted from the original recipe, were:


- olive oil ($0.20)
- 1 onion, chopped ($1)
- spoonful of minced garlic ($0.25)
- 3/4 cup uncooked basmati rice ($0.87)
- 1.5 cups vegetable broth ($1)
- ground cumin ($0.08)
- 2 cans of black beans, drained and rinsed ($1.75)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)
- garlic powder ($0.03)

The total for the black beans and rice portion of dinner was about $5.20, and when added to the rest of what we ate, the dinner total was approximately $8.65. Quite affordable for a filling meal for three.


Making the black beans and rice was pretty easy. First, you make the rice by heating some olive oil, sautéing the onions and garlic for a few minutes, then sautéing the rice for a few minutes, and then adding the broth, bringing it to a boil, covering and simmering it until it's cooked through, about 20 minutes. Then you just add all the black beans and spices, and mix it together.


Very simple and very easy, and other than the time it took to cook the rice itself, very quick. We thought it had a lot of flavor from the spices and the broth, although a bunch of commenters thought it needed other (more colorful) things that I skipped because they wouldn't fit the black and white challenge. Would make again if we were in the mood for black beans and rice instead of using our rice cooker.