quick suppers

They’re so important to me these days. I have hobbies now and I’d much rather be knitting Negra a dog sweater or crocheting myself something than standing over the stove cooking a complicated meal, especially after a long, 8 hour workday. I just don’t have it in me anymore to have all these dinner components spread out across my kitchen counter. I want to eat something fast, load the dishwasher, shower, get into my pajamas, find a nice, soothing true crime show on the tv and play with some yarn for a few hours before I have to go to sleep and start it all up again in the morning. So quick dinners – I need ‘em in my life. Here’s a good one.

Fill a large pot with water, salt it, bring it to a boil. Dump in some whole grain penne and let it cook until it’s al dente. Drain, etc. etc.

Meanwhile, chop up a link of Italian sausage (sweet or hot, it’s up to you). Chop up some onion, red bell pepper, mushrooms, and garlic. Lots of garlic. Saute all this stuff in some olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Cook until the onions have softened and slightly browned. Now at this point you can add some crushed up San Marzanos, some oregano and basil, some more garlic and salt and pepper and simmer it altogether while your noodles are cooking OR you can be like me and MEAN IT when I say I want a quick damn dinner and open up a jar of Barilla’s All Natural tomato and basil sauce and dump its contents into the sausage-onion-pepper concoction and heat it all up together. I certainly won’t judge you if you do so. Mix the saucy sausage stuff with the cooked, drained penne, top with some grated parmesan, and serve with garlic bread (if you want) and a side “salad” of sliced red onion, tomato, cucumber and red bell pepper strips with a quick red wine vinaigrette (this is literally just finely minced garlic, a few grinds of my McCormick Italian seasonings mix, some olive oil, salt, pepper and a big splash of red wine vinegar whisked altogether because even if I will do jarred tomato sauce, I draw the line at store bought dressing, dammit) spooned on top. Dinner is done and fast. Happy yarning (or however you spend your free evenings).

just because

Despite the fact that I know better, I really, really want to eat this pizza: 

http://www.xojane.com/fun/review-pizza-huts-crazy-cheesy-crust-pizza

Mostly because SO MUCH CHEESE and also because this writer on XOJane is my new favorite. And this portion of her review “Mine is the pineapple, and I don’t care that Anthony Bourdain disapproves of the combination; I disapprove of him never making out with me. We’re all disappointments to someone, Tony.” is HYSTERICAL. 

That is all.

winter blues

We’re still playing some weird tug of war with Winter here for Spring. So I’ve got sun, summer, barbecue on the brain. I received my garden seeds in the mail yesterday and of course they would arrive in the middle of an all day snow shower. But those seeds (including the free bonus packet of those cute little carrots Parisienne that Baker’s Creek tossed in my order) made me look past the dark clouds and the wet snowflakes and grin happily. I can’t wait to get them in my raised bed and start munching on fresh greens and such.

I’ve been engaging in my own little rebellions that make up my war against winter for weeks now – going out in 30 degree weather sans coat (eff you cold – I do what I want!), packing away my snow boots even though I know there’s another snow shower in the forecast in the coming days, eschewing warming soups and stews for ribs (made in the oven instead of the grill because I’m not entirely unreasonable), sandwiches, etc. I’ve been lusting after a particular sandwich since I saw it on the cover of the April issue of Bon Appetit. I knew Erik wouldn’t be into it because he is a killjoy when it comes to awesome foodstuffs (like Asian meals and chicken) so I was kind of glad he wasn’t feeling up to eating anything substantial for dinner last night. So I made myself this wicked awesome chicken sandwich and ate every last crumb. It looks just the tiniest bit complicated to put together but I swear to Christmas it’s not. It’s crisp, tangy, and wonderful.

Fried Chicken Sandwich with Slaw and Spicy Mayo
recipe from Bon Appetit 
NOTE: this is the halved recipe – I made 2 sandwiches – one for dinner and one for my work lunch. Double the amounts here to get the full serves 4 recipe. 

You Need:
1 garlic clove, finely grated or minced
1/4 c mayo
1/2 Tablespoon of hot sauce (I used Western Family brand Louisiana style because I can’t find Frank’s here)
1/4 a red onion, thin sliced
1 jalapeno, sliced thin (I omitted this because I was in a hurry to eat my sandwich and it was just one more thing to chop)
2 cups cabbage, also sliced thinly
1/4 c bread and butter pickle slices plus a couple Tablespoons of the pickle juice
1 cups flour
1 good, big grind of pepper
1 large pinch of salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 8-oz boneless, skinless chicken breasts halved crosswise
oil for frying
2 sandwich buns (I used my standard homemade burger buns that I made this weekend)
butter for the buns

For the mayo and slaw: mix the garlic, mayo and hot pepper sauce together. Refrigerate until you need it. In another bowl, mix the onion, jalapeno (if using), cabbage, pickles and pickle juice together. Refrigerate until you need it.

For the chicken: mix the flour, salt and pepper together. Pour buttermilk into another bowl. Dip your chicken in to the flour mixture, then into the buttermilk mixture, then back into the flour, dredging it well.

Pour oil into a large skillet (I use my cast iron) to a depth of 1/2 inch. Head until it reaches 350. Fry the chicken until golden and cooked through. Drain on a wire rack and pop a little more salt onto them.

Cut your rolls in half and butter them. Broil them until they’re golden brown. Spread with your mayo, add a piece of the fried chicken, then top with the slaw. Eat eat eat!

I like big bundts

and I cannot lie… yeah you knew where this was going already didn’t you? My bundt pan did so well not sticking with that chocolate cake last week that I decided to tempt fate and make another one. This time I decided to knock out some of the pureed sweet potato I had frozen (I always end up buying way too many sweet potatoes every Fall. We can only eat so much pie, man. And sweet potatoes are just so large.) Sweet potato quick bread is generally pretty good for using up leftovers, but I encountered a recipe for a pound cake that looked even better to me. it’s simple to make, fluffy on the inside and cinnamon-y. It tastes like Fall which is fine because we’re still stuck in the throes of cold weather here. Though honestly, I can eat cinnamon-y items any time of the year.

Sweet Potato Pound Cake 
recipe from Southern Food

You Need: 
1 cup butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar 
4 large eggs
2 cups mashed sweet potato 
1 teaspoon vanilla 
3 cups flour 
1 teaspoon baking powder 
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt 
3 teaspoons cinnamon 
1 teaspoon nutmeg 
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans 

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease and flour a large (12-cup) bundt pan very well. I find that Pam baking spray works great but I also sprinkle flour all up in the pan. It has worked very well to avoid the stickage that usually occurs when I bake bundts. In your stand mixer, cream the butter with the sugars until the mixture is nice and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add in vanilla and sweet potato. In another bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add some of the flour mixture into the batter and beat in. Add a little bit of the buttermilk and blend. Add in the rest of the flour and buttermilk alternately between the two until everything is blended together. Stir in the pecans. Spread the batter into your bundt pan. Bake until a tester comes out clean. Let it cool for a few minutes then invert onto a serving platter and let it cool completely. For topping, melt 2 Tablespoons of butter and brush this onto the top of the cooled cake. Instead of the powdered sugar the site recommends, I mixed some cinnamon sugar together and lightly sprinkled it onto the melted butter. It upped the cinnamon levels and made the cake taste even nicer. 

love (and chocolate)

Just when I think the guy I’m married to is the rugged, unsentimental type, he goes and proves me wrong. He turned down an invitation to a Valentine’s Day church function because “it’s a special day – they day we got engaged.” I expressed amusement that he remembered that after nearly 7 (!) years. He responded by listing what meals we had at the restaurant – even down to the margarita on the rocks I had. He got down on one knee and the waitress came over because she thought we had spilled something was why Erik was on the floor. I’m usually not one for public displays of anything resembling affection but I have to admit the memory is one of my favorite ones. I got a pretty great husband and a very pretty emerald cut amethyst and diamond ring out of the deal. It was a nice night. It’s very sweet he remembers that day so vividly. So I baked him a chocolate cake because now I’m feeling all sentimental and mushy. It’s so weird to me that almost 7 years have flown right by (honestly, where does the time go?). He’s made me a stronger and braver person and I’m enjoying the hell out of every second I’m with him.

Anyway, yuck, mushy romantic stuff! This cake is awesome – ever since Erik decided to stop being a choco-phobe and decided he was a chocoholic, he’s eaten everything chocolate in the house with gusto. This bundt cake has an earthy coffee flavor and the glaze isn’t overpoweringly sweet. It’s also super moist and pretty much the perfect specimen of chocolate cake (and a perfect cake to celebrate Valentine’s Day).

Devil’s Food Cake with Espresso Ganache 
recipe from FoodieCrush

You Need:
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped up
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/4 cups boiling water
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks softened butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3 large room temperature eggs
1/2 cup greek yogurt (I had none so I used sour cream)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Glaze
4 Tablespoons butter
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup brewed coffee (just save your breakfast coffee leftovers)
2 teaspoons instant espresso powder (I always use instant coffee and it works just fine)
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Heat your oven to 350. Butter and flour a large bundt pan – I mean grease this thing VERY WELL so your cake doesn’t stick. Set aside.

In a bowl, combine the unsweetened chocolate and cocoa in a bowl. Pour the boiling water over the chocolates and mix well. Set aside. In another bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, and salt. Set that aside. In your stand mixer, cream the butter for a minute. Add in the brown sugar and mix until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Add in the vanilla and sour cream (or yogurt). Mix in 1/3 of the flour mixture and mix in. Scrape in half the chocolate and mix. Mix in the rest of the flour mixture, then finish with the rest of the chocolate. Scrape the (super fluffy, delicious looking!) batter into the bundt pan. Bake until a tester inserted comes out clean (it took me about 35-40 minutes). Let it cool and invert it onto a plate.

For the glaze, place the butter and semisweet chocolate in a double boiler (I use a small metal pan with water and set a small metal bowl on top). Let it heat until the chocolate and butter melt. Remove from the heat. Stir in the 1/4 cup coffee and the 2 teaspoons espresso (or instant coffee) powder. Mix in the powdered sugar and vanilla. Drizzle the glaze onto the cooled cake.

gone crazy, be back soon

Or, you know, not. On Wednesday, a lady came in the office with her family to get flu shots. She was filling out her husband’s consent form and asked him “how old are you?” I heard him say “32.” I gave him the side eye immediately because 32 is one whole year older than me. Just one. In my head I was like “there is no way that dude is 32. that man is clearly in his 40s. he does not look just one year older than me.” And then I started panicking because what if my age gauge-r is off? Do I look like I’m 40? I don’t see “in her 40s” when I look in the mirror. Do young people come in my office and go “that bitch is clearly in her 40s.” And I kept panicking thinking I looked old and decrepit because if this 32 year old dude looked old then obviously my 31 year old ass looked old too and I was about two seconds away from running off to find the blood of young virgins to bathe in and then I looked at his paperwork and it said “42″ under his age. Oh. So my age gauge-r isn’t broken. I was right about his age. But now I’m starting to worry about hearing loss in my old age…

Aging is SO WEIRD YA’LL. I didn’t think about this kind of stuff when I was 29… Anyway, my old, decrepit self made this divine cake for our office Christmas party and it’s so good that I don’t even care about possibly looking like I’m in my 40s.

Pumpkin Tres Leches Cake 
recipe from My Love for Cooking 

You need:

2 cups pumpkin puree
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk

Heat your oven to 350. Spray a 9×13 baking pan with Baker’s Joy or Pam for Baking or just grease the damn thing. Beat the pumpkin together with the sugar and oil. Beat in the eggs. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet stuff. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until a tester inserted into the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool for a bit. Poke holes all over the surface of the cake with a fork (gently, I mean, don’t like rip the cake apart). In a bowl, whisk together the evaporated milk, the heavy cream, and the condensed milk. Pour this mixture over the cake. It will pool up but after awhile it will have soaked into the cake. I like to refrigerate my tres leches cake and let it sit for a few hours before I serve it to let everything soak in. I made this the night before our party. It was perfect the next day. Serve with whipped cream. I added cinnamon in my whipped cream – it was pretty tasty.

cookie love

This post was initially just a bunch of gibberish. I started typing this with a cookie hanging out of my mouth in a furious ecstatic state (or just a sugar high, possibly) and soon realized the depths of deliciousness this cookie had driven me to made me not able to form, like, actual words to describe how awesome it is. If you’re baking something, you almost can never go wrong with a good snickerdoodle, but add some brown butter to that snickerdoodle (I assume we all know how I feel about brown butter right?) and what you end up with is some serious cookie love. This is going to be a short entry because there are  more cookies staring at me from their plate. Get in my mouth, cookies…

Brown Butter Snickerdoodles 

recipe from Ambitious Kitchen

You Need:

2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of salt
2 sticks (!) of butter (worth it, trust me)
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg and 1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon greek yogurt (plain)

for rolling:
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Line some cookie sheets with parchment.
Whisk the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and salt together. Set aside.
In a large saucepan, place your butter sticks. I know that’s an awkward sentence but it stays. Heat the butter over medium letting it melt. Swirl the pan gently once in awhile so you don’t burn anything, but let it cook until it starts foaming and you see (and smell!) wonderful brown butter forming. Just watch this so nothing burns okay? When it turns a lovely golden brown, pull it off the fire and immediately scrape into a bowl. Let it sit for a few minutes to cool.

Place the butter and both sugars in your mixing bowl of your stand mixer. Mix them together until evenly blended. Add in the egg, the yolk, the vanilla, and yogurt and blend together. Add in your dry ingredients a little a time and mix until everything is just combined and no streaks of flour remain. Pop your bowl in the fridge for 20-30 minutes. Mix together the remaining sugar and cinnamon for your cookie coating. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Roll a tablespoon or so of dough into balls, roll those in the sugar-cinnamon mixture and place on your prepared cookie sheets 2 inches apart. I didn’t flatten mine – I left them in balls and they flattened by themselves just fine. Bake for about 10 minutes (until cookies are very lightly browned on the edges – you want to underbake them a little so they’ll stay soft). Let ‘em cool on cooling racks and then EAT THEM.

you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry

Does anyone else come down with the “hangries?” Let me define the hangries. The hangries are when I consume too few calories during a main meal and three to four snack-less hours later find that I am dizzy, lightheaded, feeling weak, shaky and just generally gross. Feeling gross is well, gross, and I get mad about feeling gross. So I am both hungry and angry about my plummeting blood sugar, hence I get a case of the hangries. The other day I experienced the hangries in a totally wicked way. I ate just a salad for lunch instead of pimping it out with protein and some kind of carb AND I forgot to eat my greek yogurt and fruit snack mid afternoon so at 5 I realized I was starting to feeling gross. I sped home to get some calories in my gullet and half a mile from home was stopped by the road fixer upper crew and their damned stop sign. “Oh you have to wait here for the pilot car,” they said. “It will only take about 15 minutes,” they said. Fine, grumble, grumble, I’ll just wait, I said. Fifteen minutes later, no pilot car and I’m still at a standstill. Twenty five minutes later, still no pilot car, I’m still looking at that goshdamn red stop sign, and the shakes have grown significantly worse. I’m contemplating gnawing off an arm while I’m texting furious (expletive laden frustrated texts) to Erik. THIRTY minutes later, I am on my way home. I run to the fridge expecting to grab my yogurt and THERE’S NO YOGURT. It’s in the work fridge wondering why I left it hanging for our 3 p.m. date. Also: no peanut butter and no vessel with which to get peanut butter into my mouth. Also: the only bananas I had were pitch black and in the fridge waiting to be turned into banana bread. Also: it would be another two hours before Erik got home so we could have dinner together. To say that I hulked out in pure rage at that moment would be an understatement. I had a full blown, raging case of the hangries. If there had been stuff on the counter, I would have swept it all off onto the floor in my rage and bellowed my hangry fury just like in the movies. Instead I devoured a quarter of a block of cheddar and a fistful of tortilla chips. Not good. I really wanted that yogurt. So I guess the moral of the story is I’m going to have to start being more vigilant about making calories available to me when I start to get the hangries. Don’t be surprised if you open up my work desk, or my glove box, or my bedside table and find granola, or peanut butter, or home canned fruit or bananas. I’m not hoarding food, I’m just staving off the hangries.

And to tie in the food I am writing about, coming home to a meal like this is a perfect way to dissolve the hangries. Because who can get mad at pork belly?

Pork Belly Gyros 
recipe from Salted & Styled 

You Need:
pork belly, skin removed, belly cut into 1 inch strips
a few good shakes of dried oregano
a couple of garlic cloves, minced
pepper
a bit of salt
flatbreads or some store bought pitas (I used flatbreads because I could not find good pita at the store)
tomatoes, sliced into wedges
thinly sliced red onion
tzatziki sauce

Tzatziki Sauce:
1 container of plain greek yogurt – I only had Chobani brand available to me, so I used the small size, they’re maybe, what, 1/2 cup worth?
a couple finely minced garlic cloves
1/4 of an english cucumber, grated, then drained well
a drizzle of olive oil (a tablespoon or so I guess I used)
a good sized glug of red wine vinegar (another tablespoon maybe? I don’t know, I didn’t measure)
salt, pepper

To make the sauce, mix all the ingredients together. Salt and pepper to taste and refrigerate it until you’re ready for it. This can definitely be made the night before. It tastes even better when it sits, I think.

Toss your pork strips with the garlic, oregano, pepper and some salt. Cover and let them marinate for 2 hours or overnight in the fridge. To cook them, you can either grill them like the recipe indicates, or since I didn’t have time to get that fired up, I put them in a roasting pan in a single layer, heated the oven to 450, let them cook in there at the high temp for like, 10 minutes, then dialed back the temp to 350. Cook them until until they’re well browned and tasty. You’ll know what they’re supposed to look like. Cut ‘em up into smaller slices if you want.

Serve the pork belly slices on warm pita or flatbreads with red onion, tomato wedges, and tzatziki sauce spooned on top. I put some fresh greens from the garden on mine as well. It was a pretty outstanding and relatively quick meal.

a sort of summer vacation

Well, from the blog anyway. Certainly not in real life, which is truthfully where I could use a good summer vacation the most. I’m starting to regret now all that time during actual summer vacations that I spent in an air conditioned house watching hours of Disney channel (does anyone else remember when Disney was a subscription only channel? We only got it during the summer when we were out of school because that’s the only time mom was willing to pay for it) and Nickelodeon instead of doing productive, creative things. Anyway, I’m fully aware that when Spring and Summer roll around I start neglecting this place. We spend all our time outdoors negotiating with our weird, stubborn weather, doing all those fun outside things with plants and building things, just walking around absorbing the sunshine. Lately I’ve gotten a little too much sunshine – in an effort to fix the severe farmer’s tan I usually have going on I went out in a tank top and no sunscreen (yes, I know, I’m a complete idiot sometimes) and I burned. Man, did I burn. I assume it’s karma’s way of getting back at me for threatening to set so many people on fire. I felt like I was on fire for a week and a half. And the peeling stage (which still isn’t quite finished yet) was horrendous. I didn’t just peel, people, I molted. But that’s gross and that’s not what I came here to talk about really. I came here to brag about some bread making that’s been going on. I have fully weaned myself from buying store bought yeasty products and have successfully kept a sourdough starter active for a couple months now and I have made our week’s bread from that every Sunday. But I also wanted a little variety as well as something a bit healthier than just white flour bread. I found this recipe using 7 grain hot cereal as a base and coupled with a mixture of white and whole wheat flour, I have successfully baked a multigrain loaf of bread that I don’t find dense, chewy and unpleasant. This is the complete opposite of standard store bought multigrain breads, matter of fact. The texture is luscious – absolutely tender and soft and it stays that way for far longer than standard home baked white bread. Plus the chewiness of the grains inside and the oats baked on top are not yucky and toothsome – they lend a really lovely texture to the bread that is really kind of fun to eat. Plus it’s super simple and I’m a huge sucker for simple, especially this time of year when I’ve got one eye on my kitchen projects and the other on the gardens and all the fantastic (and sometimes evil) sunshine.

Multigrain Bread
recipe from Our Best Bites

You Need:
1 1/4 cups 7 grain hot cereal mix (this was located near the oatmeal in my grocery store, with the other breakfast cereals)
2 1/2 cups boiling water
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup honey
4 Tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
3/4 Tablespoon salt (as always I use kosher)
1/2 cup old fashioned style oats

Put the cereal in your stand mixer bowl. Pour the water over it and stir it up a bit. Let the mixture stand for about an hour, stirring it once in awhile, until it gets thick. Mine never totally made like a porridge type of consistency and it baked up just fine so if after an hour it’s not all um porridgy, don’t worry about it, I say. Mix your flours together in another bowl. After your hour waiting time, add the honey, butter and yeast to the grains. Mix this up for a minute until everything is combined. Add 2 cups of your flour mixture and continue to mix (I switched to the dough hook at this point). Add more flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is tacky but not super sticky. When you touch it, it won’t stick hardcore to your fingertip is when you know it’s right. I ended up using most of my flour mixture and only had like, 1/4 cup left over. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes. Mix in the salt and knead it for a few minutes more. Grease another bowl (yeah I know, so many bowls) with cooking spray, put your dough into it, turn to grease all sides, cover and let it sit in a warm place and rise until doubled in size. Grease 2 standard size loaf pans (9×5 I think mine are). Cut your dough in half with a bench scraper. Shape those two halves into loaves and place in the pans. Spray the tops of the loaves lightly with the cooking spray. Gently press the oats into the top of each loaf. Cover and let them rise for another hour or so. Preheat the oven to 375 the last 20 minutes of rising time. Bake until the loaves are golden brown and the insides register 200 degrees when you stick a thermometer in them. Let them cool on a wire rack (so the bottoms don’t get soggy). Then eat them or store them. I found these froze really, really well.

lunch is hard

Lunch planning has gotten harder lately. I’ve gotten back into the habit of scrounging for crumbs (and usually things I shouldn’t be eating) because I don’t have it in me to plan every single bite that we eat beyond breakfast and dinner. Erik is sick of cold sandwiches but he has no access to a microwave or stove during the day and he doesn’t like soup in the summertime. It’s forcing us to get creative and some days I’m just too damn lazy to be creative. It puts me in a bad mood to be forced into something I’m not feeling. But Mr. “I Need Some Lunch Variety” was put in charge of his own lunch menu and every day for something like 3 weeks he asked for and took cold pasta salad. I’m pretty sure laziness had something to do with that decision. This week I took cans out of the pantry and veg out of the fridge and kind of stumbled my way into a Mexican style bean salad that I think he quite likes. Pop a hardboiled egg (which he loves), some watermelon (which he also loves), maybe a cookie, maybe some buttered sourdough bread I’ve baked and he’s happy. I think even I would skip the hot dogs at noon for this.

Mexican-ish Bean Salad 

You Need:
half a can or a whole can (depending on how much you want) black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 to 1 cup cooked pinto beans, rinsed and drained
a few Tablespoons of red onion, diced
a garlic clove, diced
a few Tablespoons of diced red bell pepper
a few Tablespoons of diced green bell pepper
a few Tablespoons of diced anaheim or poblano chile
a diced up serrano chile (totally optional, use this only if you want some heat)
chopped cilantro
salt, pepper
ground cumin
ground coriander
chile powder
olive oil
juice of 1 lime

Mix the beans and the veggies and the garlic together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, put in about 1/2 to 1 whole teaspoon of cumin, coriander, chile powder and the lime juice. Drizzle in some olive oil – maybe 1/4 cup? – enough to make a vinaigrette. Sorry, I don’t measure. I just drizzle in until it looks right. Season with salt and pepper. Toss the vinaigrette with the beans and veg until everything is mixed well together. Serve right away or refrigerate and dish it up as you need it. I think this would taste good with some crumbled queso fresco on top, if only I had access to it instead of having to make it.