Easy & Fast Beans & Rice

Wendy's having a drawing for a cookbook, and to enter one needs to post a recipe of the fast, tasty, healthy variety. Here's mine. Easy & Fast Beans & Rice This is more of an outline or template than a recipe. Each incarnation will be a little different! It's great for using up leftovers. Bare Minimum Ingredients: Rice Canned Beans (same weight can as the tomatoes), drained & rinsed if you like Canned Seasoned Stewed Tomatoes (same weight can as the beans), save the juice Chopped onion (fresh, frozen, or dried) Optional Ingredients: Olive oil Other fresh, frozen, or canned vegetables (corn is good as it combines with beans to make complete protein) in a quantity proportional to the beans and to your fondness for them Already cooked meat or poultry Broth, soup, or vegetable/tomato juice Garnishment such a shredded cheese, olives, chives, salsa, soy sauce, etc. 1. Start some (a cup or more) rice cooking using your preferred method and ingredients. 2. In a sauce pan big enough to hold everything, heat the tomato liquid and optional olive oil. 3. Add the onion and simmer & stir until transparent. Other fresh chopped vegetables can be added with with onion. 4. Add the tomatoes, beans, and any other vegetables, stirring everything together. Cover and simmer, adding water or other appropriate liquid if needed. Stir once in a while. Note: If your tomatoes were plain, you'll want to add seasonings to taste. 5. If you didn't get too crazy with chopping everything and you didn't use instant rice, the beans and the rice should be ready about the same time. Put some rice in a bowl, add some beans on top. Garnish if desired. Note of the DUH variety: If you want the rice and beans to come out "even," mix them together before serving. My favorite combination is red kidney beans, Mexican flavored tomatoes, fresh yellow onion, frozen corn, and long grain white rice (not instant) in my rice cooker. Yum!