Simple Eats

While I am a simple cook, sometimes simple can be so nice. Today I made dinner consisting of brown rice cooked the old fashioned way on the stove top, roasted chicken drumsticks and a colourful black bean and corn salad.

The salad consists of:

• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

• 1 1/2 cups of frozen corn kernels

• 1 medium red pepper, washed and diced

• 2 stalks of green onions, washed, peeled and diced

• 1/2 papaya, peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces

• 1 lime

After you assemble and prepare all the ingredients, simply toss them together with the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon.

If you like spices, you can add cayenne pepper and garlic. Or, you can add some avocado if you wish. As for me, I left out the spices and used bigger chunks of papaya.

Tip:  There is no need to defrost the corn kernels first. I made this salad while the rice and chicken were cooking.  By the time the main meal is ready to be plated, the corn kernels in the salad are thawed enough to eat.

I am grateful that we in the west can still eat. 

Even if we have no money there are things like food banks and soup kitchens

as long as you are able bodied enough to walk to these places. 

My heart and head are still concerned about the hungry and the 

dying in the Horn of Africa. Please consider your gift today. 

You can find donate buttons on the side of my blog.

Spinach Soup & Bean Salad

Now and then I like to try new recipes. A good part of the time the recipes are from blogging friends. This week I also tried a simple bean salad I've been wanting to make for awhile and somehow never seem to get around to.

About two weeks ago I bought and soaked garbanzo beans and kidney beans intending to make this salad but ended up not doing so. So this week, I went out and bought a large can of mixed beans and a regular sized can of green beans.

I drained and rinsed both cans of beans and put them in a corning ware dish (any serving dish will do).  I then chopped some roasted red peppers and added them to the mix. I wanted to add some chopped red onions but I didn't have any on hand. For the dressing, I mixed some cider vinegar, olive oil, sugar to taste, cracked salt and pepper and whisked them all together. I tossed the dressing and bean mixture and put it all in the fridge to chill for a few hours.

You can tell I was in a hurry because of the splashes of "juices" on the bowl.

I also made a delicious spinach soup from a recipe posted by my friend Jo over at her blog Memorable Meanders. You can find the recipe here at Jo's blog.

Thanks to Jo for sharing the recipe for this wonderful soup. It's a keeper.