Last Second Fruit Salad

I make lunch every day for many people. I love that I get to help them through their busy days and I LOVE when they take time to give me blush-worthy praise. I also make lunch each and every day for my two small humans. H and E... well, let's just say, they don't tend to throw as much praise my way as the people who pay for their soups, sandwiches and salads.

A recent quote from my son: Well, Mom... I've HEARD your soups were delicious, but I'm still just going to not eat it. Don't feel bad. Other people will.

So... I'm not normally thrilled making lunches for the kids - that is unless I'm making lunches WITH the kids. They like to eat things they make with me, which is why I asked my daughter to help me make fruit salad Sunday morning. In the past, when I have made fruit salad, they looked at it as though I were torturing them by merely suggesting they try it. BUT... if they were the actual creators, I figured I'd have a better shot at them actually eating the salad. We had a lot of leftover fruit from school lunches and R and I were getting ready to make one of our "famous to our friends" epic Sunday brunches. A fruit salad would be a fantastic accompaniment.

I had some watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple and fresh berries in the fridge. I got H a cutting board, a bowl and a kid-friendly knife and told her to start chopping. (She's not exactly into long term commitments to helping me so I also got out a knife and cutting board and was in charge of the melons.)

 Within minutes, we had a fresh fruit salad that was perfect JUST like that! In the past, I've added fruit juice (I like to go with Cranberry juice but you could use whatever you felt like), and a variety of other fruits. I'm not a huge fan of putting apples and oranges in my fruit salad - but my mom does all the time so you can definitely use what you have on hand and end up with something delicious. I think some recipes call for some sort of sugar to be added. I tend to think fruit is sweet enough without it - but perhaps if it were under-ripe, you might want to add some honey or maple syrup.

That's it! Fruit Salad - in minutes - mostly made by a seven year old. Yum.

Black Bean Soup

The weather is still not cooperating with me for the Gazpacho I wanted to blog about this week - but chilly weather means I can still justify writing about cold weather soups. (I'm looking for the silver lining here peeps - don't mistake my positive spin as actual happiness about the weather.)

Black Bean Soup is one of those things that is now a staple in my go-to soup repertoire because it is delicious, easy and adaptable.

I used to avoid making soup with dried beans because I wasn't organized enough to pre-soak the beans for 24 hours before I needed them. Even the "quick soak" methods weren't really my thing - BUT one day I decided to try to make the soup without pre-soaking just to see if it would work... And... success! This might not work for some applications but it works fine for a soup that you're expecting to be thick. (If you're a stickler for the rules, by all means soak the beans first. I'm not here to judge your excellent organizational skills.) If you were in a serious hurry, you could also just used canned black beans. You'll definitely need to rinse them until the water runs clear - but I use them for lots of recipes and they're great in a pinch for soup too.

Today's soup is vegetarian and seasoned with cumin, chilies and lime - but I've made it with Chorizo, chicken stock, with tomatoes and without. There are tons of options.

Black Bean Soup

Here's what I did today:

1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
16 oz bag dried black beans, rinsed
about 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Vegetable stock and/or water (I used about 16 cups)
about 1 tablespoon cumin
about 2 teaspoons chili powder
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in soup pot and add onions, carrots and celery. Saute about 5 minutes. Add the cumin and chili powder and rinsed black beans. After about one minute, add about 8 cups water. Keep checking water levels. You want the beans to cook and they'll absorb a LOT of water. You can gauge the amount of water you want to add based on the thickness you like your soup.

Let simmer on medium-high for about 3 hours, adding water as necessary. Add lime juice (and, if you're feeling citrus-y you could zest the lime as well) and season to taste.

There was some soup leftover at the end of the day and I decided to switch it up and turn it into a Southwestern Tomato, Corn and Black Bean Soup. I added frozen corn, canned diced tomatoes, some more vegetable stock and garnished with cilantro and shredded cheddar cheese. Had I left out the vegetable stock, it could have easily been Black Bean Chili.

Southwest Black Bean, Tomato and Corn Soup