Mmm Mmm Monday: Barley, Mushrooms, Beans & Spinach...Thing

We're back, with more beans and better than ever.  So I have all this stuff in the pantry: canned beans, dry lentils, dry pinto beans, barley, canned tomatoes, vinegars and oils, herbs, spices, etc.  I guess it's a good thing to have the basics on hand, especially as a budding vegetarian, but then I see all these half-empty containers of grains, beans, etc. and a half dozen cans of a half dozen kinds of beans and so on, and the Junior OCD in me wants to clear stuff out.  So I rooted around allrecipes.com for recipes to use up some stuff and found Barley and Mushrooms with Beans, which I then proceeded to hand over to Kevin to cook for us the other night.

As always, the link is there, but here's the recipe, too, along with changes Kevin made noted in italics.

Ingredients

• 1 t. olive oil (didn't use this bc he didn't saute the veggies at the beginning)
• 3 c. sliced fresh mushrooms
• 1 c. chopped onion
• 1/2 c. chopped celery
• 1/4 c. chopped sweet red pepper (mostly for color)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 c. uncooked barley (1 c. uncooked barley)
• 3 c. vegetable broth (homemade!)
• 1 15.5 oz. can white beans, drained (cannellini beans...are these different from white beans?  I dunno)
• fresh spinach
• grated parmesan
• salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Heat oil in medium saucepan and stir in mushrooms, onion, celery & garlic; saute until tender.
2. Mix barley & broth into the saucepan; bring to a boil; cover & reduce heat.  Simmer, 40 - 45 minutes, until barley is tender.
3. Stir beans into the barley mix; cook about 5 minutes, until beans are heated.

What we Kevin really did:

1. Mix barley & broth into the saucepan; bring to a boil; cover & reduce heat.  Simmer, 40 - 45 minutes, until barley is tender.
2. When barley is almost tender, stir in mushrooms, onion, celery & garlic.
3. Add in some fresh spinach just before taking the saucepan off the heat.  Add the spinach at the very end so that it just wilts a little before you take it off the heat.
4. Season with salt & pepper to taste.
5. Serve with grated parmesan cheese.

Servings: 6

Notes:

• Some of the changes were suggested by reviewers at allrecipes.  There were other good suggestions; you might find some you might prefer to try.
• One reviewer noted that the veggies had lost their crunch by the end of the cooking process so they suggested cooking them separately and putting them in at the end which is kind of what Kevin did.  He put them in at the end, but didn't saute them at all; just let them cook as the barley finished cooking.
• Another suggestion was to reduce the amount of broth and/or increase the amount of barley bc it's kinda mushy otherwise.  Kevin increased the amount of barley.
• One such suggestion was to use red kidney beans instead of the white beans.  This is prolly yummy and it would add a little much needed color to a rather beige dish.  Another suggestion was to use a combo of different mushrooms; I bet that would add some interesting flavors.
• This could be a side dish or, as we ate it the other night, a light meal.
• This reheated well on the stove with a little liquid (I used broth) added to it; it seems to thicken up a bit by leftover time.  It did not reheat well in the microwave bc the beans blew up!