Burritos with rice

One minute in the microwave at work took the chill off. It survived being assembled a few hours in advance.

Burritos

Adapted from “New Dieter’s Cook Book” from Better Homes & Gardens

This is clearly an older school diet cookbook, when fat and cholesterol were the main demons on the horizon, not carbs and gluten. A quick rifle through of the first pages of the book shows processed flour products everywhere. The 1992 edition I have was superseded by another, and even that one looks to be available only used. At this point there are far more and better diet cookbook options out there. But it’s still hanging out on my bookshelf, and out of the several hundred pages of recipes, some of them seem viable take-to-work options.

Ingredients:

½ pound lean ground beef

1 cup chopped onion

1 15-ounce can black beans

1 10-ounce can tomatoes with green chili peppers

1 teaspoon chili powder

Chopped green onion for garnish

2 cups cooked brown rice

1 10-ounce can tomatoes with green chilis

4 flour tortillas

Method:

Cook ground beef with onions until meat is no longer pink and the onions are tender. Add black beans, tomatoes and chili powder. Simmer until the liquid cooks down to a more sauce-like consistency (otherwise you’ll have mushy burritos).

Set aside ¼ cup for topping. Spoon a quarter of the remaining filling into each tortilla, folding into a pocket. Top with some of the reserved filling and serve each with a quarter of the rice-tomato mixture.

I suspect the main thing that makes these burritos qualify as diet food is simple portion control. But they were fast enough to make and something I could heat up at work. Of course, this means now I have to eat it three more days, since all the recipes in this book are designed around a family of four whose mother is making them diet along with her.