"What are you making?" Anne asked.

I looked up from the cutting board, and put the knife down so I wouldn't somehow cut my hand off when I wasn't looking (yes, I am that clumsy). "Black bean soup," I said.

"Is it from a recipe, or are you winging it?"

"I've made so many different recipes from so many different places, I just looked through the pantry and refrigerator and wung it."

We looked at each other. "Wung it?" I said. "I think I mean I am winging it What's the past-tense of winging it? Wang it? Winged it?"

"I don't know, but it's not 'wung it,'" she said. I couldn't argue with her.

"Anyway, it's fun to feel confident enough in my limited cooking skills to pull together some ingredients and combine them in a way that seems to make sense, based on my previous experiences."

She nodded, and left me to my work.

That was about an hour ago. I'm currently sitting here, eating an absolutely delightful bowl of soup, that's a little sweet and spicy. I'm so proud of myself, I could fart a rainbow (and I probably will in a little while.)

Because I did this on my own, I think I can share the recipe without breaking any rules or stepping on any actual chef's toes, so here you go:

SOUP. BLACK BEAN. HOT.

You need:

1 can black beans

3 tomatoes (I used Romas)

2-3 cloves garlic

1 small yellow onion

1 chipotle chili (you can get these in the Hispanic foods section at the store for next to nothing and they make all sorts of recipes kick ass.)

1 Teaspoon dried oregano or 2 teaspoons fresh, chopped

1/2 Teaspoon cumin

2 Tablespoons olive oil.

Juice of one lime.

Salt and pepper.

OKAY GO!

Chop the onion and mince the garlic.

Heat the olive oil in a 3qt soup pot or similar-sized saucepan over medium high heat for a minute or so.

Sautee the onion until translucent, about 4 or 5 minutes. While it cooks, chop up the tomatoes into small chunks and chop the oregano if you're using fresh. When the onions are translucent, Add the garlic and cumin, stir it all around, and continue to sautee for about another 2 minutes. Be careful not to let the garlic burn.

Shake up the can of black beans, open it, and pour it all into the soup pot. Stir, and then add the tomatoes and oregano.

Chop up the chipotle chili (you can use more if you want, but be careful not to use too many or all you'll taste is the spiciness, and that's not fun.) Stir again, and then add the chopped chipotle.

Add the lime juice (if you're hardcore, just juice that little green bastard right over the simmering pot, and say some Bond Villain stuff about how you expect it to die.)

Add about 1/3 cup of water (more or less, just don't let it get too watery or too thick) and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 10 or 15 minutes, until the beans are tender. 

Add salt and pepper to taste. You can serve it with plan yogurt or sour cream to cut the spiciness if you want.

This recipe made enough to feed me and Anne, though I'm sure it could easily be doubled for more people.

I saw this image on Geekosystem yesterday. It made me smile, and I thought it was a good excuse to dig this out of the archives:

You may note that, in the linked image, the adorable cat is sitting next to a "beer", unwilling to even consider drinking it (smart cat) but in this image, Freddy Snowpants (RIP) enjoyed his first Stone Pale Ale so much, he felt strange but also good and couldn't even open his second one.

I am slowly but steadily finding my way back to that mysterious land where I feel motivated and inspired to write something every day. I blame Fallout: New Vegas for wrapping me up in an interesting world every night, and a giant stack of comic books that reminded me how much I love superhero stories. I've been working on a short short story (about 2K words) that I hope to release soon, but holy shit is it kicking my ass. I have a ton of respect for authors who can stick with a full length (or even 10K or 15K) story, because I am having a very hard time getting out of the "well, this was a good idea, but the execution really sucks" part of the process.

Anyway, that's not why I sat down to write this post. This post is about this frozen box of pretzels I bought yesterday, which can allegedly be heated to perfection in the microwave, dusted with salt (that comes in a handy packet and everything) and then enjoyed the way one enjoys a pretzel that does not suck.

What. A. Load.

Seriously, I don't think there's enough beer and mustard on the planet to make this pretzel — which is more chewy unsatisfying lump of salty dough than what is traditionally understood to be a pretzel — enjoyable.

But it's sitting here, on my desk, looking all sad and lumpy and pathetic, one bite taken out of it, almost apologetic. If this pretzel-like thing could talk, it would probably say, "Hey, man, I'm sorry. When I was at the pretzel place where they make pretzels, I came out of the oven and I was perfect. I was warm, I had that pretzel thing going where the outside of me is slightly thicker than regular crust, so the inside of me was all soft and kind of lighter than regular bread, but when they froze me and put me into the box, well, something just died inside of me, man."

I feel like I should apologize to the pretzel for hating it so much — it's not entirely its fault that it sucks as much as it does — but unlike everything else that surrounds me, this particular inanimate object doesn't seem interested in having a conversation with me that I can transcribe. Uh, beyond the one prepared statement, I guess.

I guess it's my own fault for ignoring a lifetime of disappointing microwavable bread products and ignoring the sage advice of my wife, who said, "That's going to suck, and you're going to be pissed that you bought it, and you keep complaining about feeling tubby so why are you eating pretzels, anyway?"

I guess the moral of the story is: don't go shopping when you're hungry.

In happier news, I have three pretzel-shaped frozen hunks of bread to throw at the next group of surly kids who refuse to get off my lawn.