Black Bean and Corn Salad

Apparently, we post in August these days. Oops. Anyway, we have now made a black bean and corn salad twice, and we like it a lot. I made it up based on a similar salad I had when we were at MathFest this year (except that one had cilantro in it, and I despise cilantro. If you like cilantro, you should probably add it to your salad. Unless you're going to feed your salad to me or anyone else who can't stand cilantro. Then have a heart, and don't send us home with a metallic soapy taste in our mouths). So, anyway, here's somewhat of a recipe (when I say I made this up, I'm serious, so of course I didn't measure):

some cans of black beans, rinsed (number depends on size of group you're serving)
some corn (the better the corn, the better the salad), cooked/unfrozen
some onions, chopped (browned if you're like me and have trouble with raw onions)
some green and/or red peppers, chopped (or another color; these can be browned with
the onions if you so desire)
some tomato, chopped
juice of a lemon or lime (or more than one, depending on how much of the previous
ingredients you're using)
some olive oil (as in, a few tablespoons)
some vinegar (I've been using white--probably 1/8-1/4 cup)
some cumin
some garlic powder or pressed garlic if you want it stronger
some cayenne pepper
some salt

Mix all the dressing-type ingredients together and pour on top of the other ingredients. Mix well; refrigerate for a few hours before serving.

If you like spicy (we do, in case you weren't aware), I think some jalapeños or jalapeño juice would be a nice addition. Of course, I forgot that I think that this morning when we were making the salad. Green onions could work, too, as could jalapeño-pickled carrots.

Curried Chickpea Salad

We went to a restaurant in Angelica for lunch on my birthday and had a curried chickpea wrap. We both liked it but agreed that we should be able to make it better at home. Tonight we had our first attempt based on this recipe, but because I didn't want to waste the good ingredients in case we didn't like it, we halved the recipe. Also, 

 we had no limes, so we used lemon juice; 

 we had no olive oil, so we used just a tiny bit of vegetable oil; 

 we had no maple syrup, so we used honey; 

 we had no cumin seeds, so we used ground cumin; 

 we had no raisins, so we used dried apricots; 

 we had no red pepper, so we used green;

 we had no red onions, so we used Vidalia*; 

 we had no fresh parsley**, so we used a bit of dried parsley; 

 we had no pitas, so we used homemade bread; 

 and we had no mixed greens, so we used red leaf lettuce. 

I feel like this is some children's book about curried chickpea salad during the Great Depression. By the way, we liked this a lot. Probably a new staple. 

Oh, and we added carrots and put toasted almonds on top. 

*which for some reason were cheaper at Wegmans than yellow onions were. 

**or cilantro, but there will never be cilantro in my mouth voluntarily if I'm in charge of cooking.

Vegetable Mix (Some Might Call It a Salad)

We got a cucumber at the grocery store because I wanted to try the recipe that Catherine suggested in her comment a long time ago. So for lunch today, I made it. Well, kind of--we didn't have any green peppers (they're $1.29/each at the cheapest right now and our pepper plants aren't even flowering yet, so it will be awhile before we're eating homegrown green peppers), so I used some red pepper and just cooked it with the onion. I'm also not a huge fan of vinegar, so I used our new salad dressing (we had a coupon--you can print one from that website--and it was on sale). We had leftover pasta and garbanzo beans in the fridge (separately), so I added some of each. It was very good. Thanks, Catherine!

Potluck

Potluck Sunday at our church is always a bit difficult for us--we don't want to take anything that needs to be baked because the ovens are always crowded and the potluck oven-use etiquette is entirely unclear, so we usually end up taking brownies or something in the crockpot. Yesterday (we have Potluck Sunday the first Sunday of every month, so this is a frequent issue) we had decided to ride our bikes to church, so the crockpot was clearly not a viable solution. I'm a fan of leaving the brownies in the pan in which they are baked, so they didn't seem to be the greatest solution either. Instead, we made a bean salad because we had all those ingredients and I was sick of having the green beans in our freezer. Ryan liked it, and one of our friends asked for the recipe, but I was not impressed (of course, Ryan picked the recipe with the warning that I would not like it--which I was pretty clear on myself). It was okay, it transported well, it was very easy to make, and it looked pretty (we used black beans instead of garbanzo beans because I used all the garbanzo beans in curry earlier in the week--but that's another post), so I wasn't too disappointed that I had no desire to eat it.