This summer in the PNW has been somewhat brutal so far. We have had several heat waves and the constant wildfire smoke, although not as thick as a few years ago, has been unrelenting. That forces us to keep our windows closed.
Normally in the summertime, even on the hottest days of our year we can open our windows in the evening and cool off the house, and also cook, but with everything being shut tight to keep the air from resembling an old-school dive bar our incentive is to keep heat out of the house at all costs. At the end of the day though, especially when we have been lifting heavy at the gym, we want something hearty, healthy, and satisfying – meaty I’d dare say. But we also don’t want to run an oven or even a stovetop if we can help it.
Its salad to the rescue.
After thumbing through several salad constructions and not finding what I wanted, I kinda hacked one together out of all the interesting bits. For lack of a better description, I’ll call this a:
Black Bean Pepper Salad with Avocado, Corn, and Lime Vinaigrette.
Fancy eh? Would you order that in a restaurant and pay $15 for it? I would in a pinch but I can make it for less than $5. The only novel ingredient is the hatch pepper which only comes around once per year.
Take a drained and rinsed can of black beans and dump into a bowl with cut up shallot, peppers, avocado, cilantro, and sautéed corn – frozen works well but if you can get cob-corn it might be better.
Whip up a quick vinaigrette with lime juice, dijon, and some olive oil, and you are in business. You can use Red Bell Pepper in place of the Hatch since they are so hyper-seasonal.
Quick, easy, and awesome. We got two meals out of this.
\m/
