NEW BEGINNING

I have the strangest feeling. The feeling that I had better hurry up and do something. I don’t want to be late. I don’t want to forget. I don’t have much time….

But I do. I have a ton of time now. I retired from my job on Friday. It is an early retirement since I am still in my 50s and I am ecstatic.

Still I am feeling a great deal of anxiety because I should be getting a bunch of stuff done in preparation for my work week. It will take some time to wrap my head around the fact that I do not have to get up at some ungodly hour to drive to my job an hour away. I do not have to reach performance goals for the day. I do not have to track the results. I do not have to deal with the escalations from customers, who quite frankly have shown themselves all too often, to be disgusting people.

I am looking forward to more cooking and recipes on here. I am looking forward to getting to know my new town since we have been here a year but I have not had much time to prowl and post about the wonderful finds. I am looking forward to not caring when I cannot sleep in during the night.

I am looking forward to having the time to visit with my fellow bloggers who have sadly been neglected by me over the past 5 1/2 years. I have missed you all so much.

EASY BLACK BEAN SALAD

I have been craving a black bean salad for a while now. I kept forgetting to buy the black beans though.

Finally  I picked some up and made a big container of bean salad to take to work for lunches this week.

I didn’t have a “go to” recipe so I went online to see what I could find that sounded good. One of the first recipes I saw called for adding mango to the salad.

What? Mango? I love mangoes but better yet I had a jar of a mango/peach salsa in my fridge that I had bought at Costco. Says it has a hint of habanero in it too. It is a delicious salsa.

It just occurred to me that I don’t have to do hardly any work for this salad if I just throw in a bit of fresh green onions, celery and cilantro.

So here you go:

1 can of black beans, rinsed
1 can of kidney beans, rinsed
1 can of garbanzo beans, rinsed
2 cups of fresh or frozen corn kernels
2 cups of salsa of your choice (or more if you like)
3 green onions, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
one big handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
juice from one fresh lime squeezed into the mix which will add such a fresh zip to the taste.

You can add any spices that you like. Chili powder, cumin, pepper. Add some different vegetables too. Like avocado? Toss some in but only if you are eating it today otherwise add it only the day of so it doesn’t discolor on you. How about chopped fresh jalapeno peppers. That was all I think mine was missing but I didn’t have any.

So in the end you have slaved away opening 3 cans of beans, a bag of frozen corn and a jar of salsa along with about 1 minute and half of chopping. Quite frankly you could get away with just the beans, corn and salsa in a pinch.

Ya. I think you can do this.