What can you make from Quinoa, canned black beans, and slightly wilted apples after the apocalypse and does it taste any good? Continue reading to find out!

This is my unofficial entry to the Prepper Cook-Off Challenge #2.

The goal of the challenge is to equip us preppers with the ability to get creative with our stored food and expand the possibilities of what can be made with limited ingredients. Modern society has made us become too complacent, often relying on the grocery store down the road to provide any missing ingredients for supper. Also, random dice rolls can be a bit comical and a lot of fun.

For this challenge, I had originally rolled flour and apples, not a bad roll really and combined with a third ingredient of my choosing plus spices I was envisioning some sort of pie or cobbler. (See the entry post for the restrictions and rules). But it wasn't to be and a fellow contestant needed to trade because he rolled an item that wasn't available in his part of the world. After the trade, I had black beans and apples (he also rolled apples).

What the Heck do you do with Black Beans and Apples?

According to the rules you are allowed one more primary ingredient that is shelf stable. I decided to choose quinoa and attempt to make a salad. Although, with no vegetables is it really a salad?

I also needed to have some sort of flavoring or dressing. I was originally leaning towards making an Italian dressing using our Italian Spice Mix because that would be easy but I wasn't sure how that would pair with the beans. Instead, I opted for an Asian dressing.

Ingredients:

• 3 Apples (slightly wilted as would be found in abandoned root cellar)
• 1 Can of Black Beans
• 1 cup Quinoa (dry)

• 1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
• 2 tsp Sesame Oil
• 1 1/2 tbsp vinegar
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp sugar (to taste)
• 1/4 tsp salt (to taste)

Directions (AKA how I cobbled this together)

Start by cooking the quinoa; two cups water for every cup of dry quinoa. Rinse the quinoa well. Bring the water to a boil, add the quinoa and then simmer on low for approximately 15 minutes until all the water is soaked up. Once done, place in a mixing bowl and leave it in the cellar to cool for awhile (fridges will work too if you have one...).

Peel the apples and slice into chunks. If they are a bit banged up and wilted, like the ones I found, remove any parts that are bruised. Drain and rinse the beans. Mix up the dressing in a small bowl or better yet shake in a jar so that the ingredients are mixed together well. Mixing the dressing with a measuring spoon like I did is a little more challenging!

Retrieve your cooled quinoa and combine all ingredients in the same bowl and mix gently until even distribution has been achieved. Serve to your starving fellow apocalypse survivors. Feeds 6-8 if you are lucky enough to have another dish or two to go with it. If not, it would probably satisfy 4 adults.

Evaluation

The flavors were OK but a little bland. Something was missing but we couldn't quite put our finger on what it was. For hungry survivors, it would probably taste amazing but under normal circumstances, I would rate it as a 5/10; definitely edible but room for improvement. Overall, I think this recipe is a great stepping stone to something better.

I am wondering if the Italian dressing would have been the better choice so that might be something worth experimentation. Although, having a base recipe and varying the dressing could provide variety if you ever had to rely on your preps.

I think something like bean sprouts would be a nice addition to this salad because of the crunch. You could even cut the amount of quinoa in half and add the bean sprouts to balance things out a bit better. Also, some fresh herbs like mint or cilantro might be nice for both flavor and color.

One thing I like about the recipe is that the black beans could also be cooked and prepared from dry. If you also decided to add bean sprouts those are also easy to make from dry beans. Additionally, the salad has a pretty good protein profile with the quinoa and beans. In summary, this could be a very good storable food recipe with a few tweaks.

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