More like Meatless Sunday and Monday. Last night, I whipped out my new William Sonoma Soup cookbook I got for Christmas and picked something I’ve never made before…..black bean soup! Are you shocked? I know you all haven’t seen my eating any beans at all in the past few days so why not? And yes, I know at the rate I am going I am going to morph into a black bean at any moment but I am willing to take a chance. I like to think of it as making up for lost years. My parents never made us eat beans while growing up and they still don’t eat beans to this day. Whenever we go out for Mexican food, they always order double rice instead of getting a side of refried beans (I still don’t know how some don’t like this, hello, it’s smothered in cheeeeeese!). But me, I love the frijoles. Black, white, garbanzo, dark kidney, chili, I’m equal opportunity to it all. I wanted to start doing Meatless Monday again so I could vary up my routine a bit from the usual chicken, pork or beef. One of my goals for 2011 is to cut down on my meat intake so this goes hand in hand with it.
Back to the soup, I can’t post the recipe for obvious reasons but I will show via pictures.
I felt like I was making chili but without tomato paste and less tomato. The recipe called for two cans of black beans and I used two and a half to beef it up a little more and cut down on the chicken broth by four cups.
Instead of making the soup, then ladling the black beans into a food processor or blender, I put them in the magic bullet before making the soup to give them a soupy consistency.
I was skeptical about the recipe at first since it called for chipotle peppers in adobe sauce and I am not the biggest fan of the smokier flavored pepper but wanted to give it a shot. If you like chipotle, you will love this recipe as it seemed to highlight that flavor the most (besides the black beans, duh)
Even with cutting down on the chicken broth, this still made four huge portions as it was called for in the book. It was a perfect meal for a cold night and I’m stoked to have learned yet another soup to make. I didn’t think it was too spicy since the chipotle peppers are more a slow, smokey hotness but it had my eyes watering a bit. I put a dollop of sour cream in it and topped with green onions for a little more zing. I can’t wait to nosh on this throughout the week and even put a container in the freezer for some enjoyment later on. I don’t mind leftovers as all but three is my normal max number of times I can eat leftovers of one thing in a week.
And today was more meatless fun. I’ve tried to do the whole veggie thing in the past and didn’t succeed because I wasn’t prepared but was this time around. I hate some Chobani greek yogurt for breakfast and snacked on hummus and veggies in the afternoon. Lunch was leftover enchiladas
Being Monday and the first full week I’ve worked in forever and just wasn’t feeling the whole work vibe today….or doing anything for that matter. I ate lunch at my desk while catching up on world events celebrity gossip then took a 20 minute stroll just to get some blood flowing. Luckily, it was cold out and not a lot of people who were outside but the ones who were out there I would try to out walk out, without them know of course because I’m sneaky sneaky like that. I cut into Starbucks in the way back in to say hi since I haven’t been there in four days. Yes, you read right, I haven’t been to Starbucks in four days. One of my resolutions is to cut down on the money I spend on coffee. I am not going to go cold turkey on the Buckies but really don’t need to be spending extra cash when I can bring my own every now and then. My baristas were excited to see me an asked where I’ve been so I told them the whole resolution thing and I don’t think they approved. So for that, they got me a grande pike with peppermint stat because they are cool like that. I love my baristas but I love free coffee even better!
After lunch, I was useless. I think I did ok with looking like I was busy or doing something work related but in reality, I was paying bills, budgeting, finishing up what my goals are for the year (a little behind on that one). I got alot done in the morning but just felt unmotivated in the afternoon. No matter what I did, time seemed to creep by very slowly and was counting down the minutes until I could get out of there. For dinner, I had a fresh pack of Nasoya cubed tofu in the fridge and wrapped in paper towels last night and pressed a plate on top of it to get all the liquid out. I’ve tone sesame tofu, tofu tacos and bbq tofu but wanted to mix it up with a different sauce to try. Then I remember my Cloister Honey Arbol Pepper honey marinade!
I haven’t tried this yet but recalled the Cloister Honey dude telling me it would be great to cook on shrimp or scallops and figured it would be equally as great on chicken or beef so tofu cook this stuff couldn’t be bad. The hard task was mixing it up in the jar since all the pepper flakes were at the top and it was tough! Then I remembered it is honey and kinda difficult to mix up.
I spooned some on the tofu and let sit for a few minutes while I began chopping up mushrooms and broccoli and got some brown rice cooking. When I make stir fry I like to add some garlic, red pepper flakes, ginger, black pepper and salt but only added garlic and pepper this time since I didn’t want to take away from the flavor of the honey marinade.
Scrumptious! I topped with green onions and once I did, I remembered that I had chopped red peppers in the fridge that I was going to cook as well. I hate when that happens! Of course this was eaten with chopsticks to make it seem somewhat authentic plus that slows me down from scarfing the whole bowl down.
The rest of the night involves me, the couch, a dog and a man.
But which man?
Nights like this I miss my DVR.
PS-I emailed Groupon today along with the picture of the Groupon with Groupon misspelled. Subject line? Misspelling of Groupon on a Groupon–eek!
My neighbor ran as well but she was behind me so I refueled and cooled down while I waited for her
Simply Shaka 