Simplified Haitian Rice 'n Beans

Growing up with a parent who had spent a good part of her early adult life in Haiti I of course grew up eating pumpkin soup around New Year's Day and Haitian-style rice and beans. Both are fantastic meals, but rice and beans in particular I've rarely made because of how long they take, especially since moving to the PRC and being reduced to using one hot plate. (Overnight - or over-flight rather! - meals requiring more than one burner to make became time-consuming pains in the butt.) So I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize that I could probably make a modified rice and beans in my rice cooker! I finally had a light bulb moment today though, and what follows is how I went about bringing this great meal back into my life!

Vegetable Rice with Sausage and Egg

I've been trying to economize these last couple of months - for economizing's sake, thank goodness - and a variation of what became this was suggested by a friend when I complained about being tired of fried everything. If you've lived in the PRC, you know how cheap the ingredients are! And you've probably also used them (in combination with various other things) in countless fried rice and fried noodle dinners. It's so nice to have an alternative - not a big change up, but enough to keep me
from getting tired of all the rice! (I know, I know, I'm far from enculturated. I recently had a new coworker begin our first conversation with, 'Do you like rice? I love rice. I only eat rice!' In the past I would have dismissed such a story as stereotyping, but I have yet to meet someone here who thought a proper meal was complete without rice...)