Drunken Pinto Beans with Charred Onions and Chiles

A friend joined me for lunch today, and we decided to eat in. I've been putting off going to the grocery store for a few days, so my cupboards were almost bare, but I had just enough to make this Drunken Pinto Beans dish.

If you don't have much time to spend chopping this is a great dish, with only eight ingredients. The only things you have to chop are onions, hot pepper, and cilantro. Piece of cake.

I'm giving this dish 4 stars. Easy to make. Highly tasty. If you're looking for a simple and hard to mess up (unless your beer is skunked -- sorry about that time Tommie!), this one's worth trying.

Black Bean Soup with Cumin, Chiles, and Lime

Best. Black. Bean. Soup. Ever.

No wait.

Best. Soup. Ever.

I've made this soup a few times, but I feel very strongly that the wrong beer (one of the ingredients) can destroy the dish. And, since I haven't had a beer in easily a decade, I have not been very good at picking beers. But today, I went to the old faithful Heineken, my beer of choice in the '90s. Complete fracking success.

Couple things if you make this: instead of removing 2 cups of soup and blending them, I just blended the soup in the pot a bit with my immersion blender. Not the whole thing, just enough so that when you stir it around you get that fabulous, thick texture that all black bean soups must have (IMHO).

Also, I opted for plain yogurt instead of sour cream, and I went with a fat-free one. Tasted fabulous. Why add the fat and calories if you don't need them?

So, for the first time EVER, I am awarding this dish 6 out of 5 stars. Best. Soup. Ever.