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| Jerk chicken, cilantro lime quinoa, spicy black beans, guac, and a cornbread muffin! Big filling lunch! |
It all started Wednesday, when I whipped up some spicy black bean soup and corn bread muffins. The spicy black bean soup was incredibly easy. I just had to dice and sauté an onion, a few cloves of garlic, and a serrano pepper in a small pot with some olive oil. I sprinkled on about a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of chili powder, and a teaspoon of oregano. I let it sauté for a couple of minutes, then added a couple cups of chicken broth, two (rinsed and drained) cans of black beans, and a bay leaf. I partially covered the soup and let it simmer on low heat for about half an hour. Then, I briefly immersed my stick blender into the soup and blended it a little. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can take some of the soup out and blend it, then add it back to the pot. Add however much salt and pepper tastes good (this will depend on how salty your beans are to begin with). Ta-da! Spicy black bean soup! Next time I make it, I'm going to reduce the broth to 3/2 cups and double the peppers to make it spicier and thicker.
I paired the soup with some corn bread muffins and guacamole. I cracked open a box of cornbread muffin mix (cheating but still delicious) and added some diced serrano peppers to pep it up a bit. I left a couple of the muffins plain. Then, I baked the cornbread muffins at 400 for about 15 or 20 minutes. I took them out when they looked nicely browned around the edges. I ate a few of these before Steve got home. After all, I'm a "hungry lady" as one dining hall server once labeled me during undergrad.
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| Cilantro is so good! I hope they fix people's genes so all the people who think it tastes like soap get corrected. |
Since we had three beautifully ripe avocados, I opened them up and turned them ALL into guac. Oh yeah! I love guac! I just diced half a small onion and a tomato (making sure to exclude the juicy bits), then added those little nummies to the avocado bowl. Then, I threw on some cumin (maybe a teaspoon), some salt (perhaps a teaspoon again), and a few grinds from the pepper cracker. I mixed it all up and garnished the soup with a good heap of avocado.
Yesterday, Steve marinaded a few chicken breasts in a bottle of Caribbean jerk sauce for a few hours. He baked it in foil for half an hour last night. Then, today for lunch, we got out the chicken, the leftover bean soup, the guac, and the last cornbread muffin. Steve prepared some quinoa while I used a microplane to zest a lime. I also washed and chopped up about 2/3 a cup of cilantro. When the quinoa was done cooking, we threw in the lime zest and the cilantro, and squeezed the lime into the cilantro. Mmmm!
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| I loooove the smell of lime!! |
Finally (I was practically dying with excitement at this point), I managed to snap a few pictures of the plated up yummies before burying my face in it... in the most lady-like way possible. All the flavors went together really well, with no one part of the meal overwhelming the others. Despite the large amount of food I ate, I felt pretty good because it was all pretty healthy. And now all this blogging has gotten my appetite ready for some java chocolate chunk ice cream! Healthy lunch means you can do whatever you want the rest of the day. I think that's the rule.