Sweet Black Bean Lettuce Burritos

It's Crockpot Monday, and today I'm made Hearty Black Bean Soup... which turned into just well cooked black beans, which I then made into black "refried" beans.  So, this is my first experience with successfully cooking dried beans, and I have to say it turned out well, but not as the end result I was expecting.  I got a recipe off of Crock-pot.com, called Hearty Black Bean Soup.  It took quite an extensive amount of time in the Crockpot till the meal was done, so I would suggest starting it very early if you want to eat at a normal hour.

Hearty Black Bean Soup

Ingredients: 

1 pound dry black beans, soaked overnight, drained, and rinsed

2 TBSP vegetable oil (I omitted)

1 large yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 TBSP fresh cilantro or Italian parsley, minced (I used parsley)

8 c vegetable broth

1/4 crumbled cheese (I omitted)

Directions: Combine all ingredients (except cheese) in a crockpot.  Cover and cook on high for two hours, then on low for 5 hours.  Switch back to high for last 3 hours.  The soup is done when the beans are at a good consistency.

When the recipe was finally done (around 9:30pm for me), the soup did not look very appetizing at all.  The broth had been tinted a black color, and the onions had turned purple.  Because there were no spices added it was rather bland, so I ended up draining the excess liquid and considering this recipe as to merely make well-cooked black beans, which it definitely did!  For dinner tonight I used the beans to make Sweet Black Bean Lettuce Burritos.

Sweet Black Bean Lettuce Burritos

Ingredients: 

1 c cooked black bean mix, pureed

1 c cooked black bean mix

8 grape tomatoes, halved

1/2 c diced pineapple (I used canned)

1/4 c pineapple juice

2 tsp jalapeno, miced (I used jarred)

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions: In a medium sized skillet, combine pureed and whole beans with the pineapple juice and heat over medium heat for 5 minutes.  Add pineapple, grape tomatoes, jalapeno, and cayanne pepper to the skillet.  Continuing to stir, fry ingredients until most of the excess liquid has evaporated.  Serve topped with fresh copped green onions, and wrapped with lettuce.

Amy's note:  You can serve this with many types of lettuce.  I would normally prefer butter lettuce, but this time I used ice burg lettuce.  It tends to be a bit messy, but using lettuce as wraps is a great way to get your greens in!

Have you ever not cared too much for an original recipe, but found something better to make from the leftovers?