Black Bean Soup

 It's cold and I want warm food.  That means another soup recipe.  In fact, this whole week's worth of recipes is new.  I hope my family forgives me for subjecting them to so many new recipes in one week.

I received Sara Wells & Kate Jones' recipe book of Our Best Bites several years ago for Christmas, and am still working my way through all of the recipes.  So, this week's stuff all comes from there.  Today I tried their Black Bean Soup.  I was "souper" worried because I don't normally serve black-colored food for dinner (besides chocolate), and while the kids seemed apprehensive, they didn't actually say anything.

The soup itself tasted really good and smelled really good when cooking.  I don't use my immersion blender often, so that was a new experience.  (And took a really long time).  I liked adding taco chips and cheese to the soup.  I would definitely make this recipe again...

...but not as a soup.  At dinner, Nate said, "You made a really good bean dip."  And he was right.  The texture was off for soup, but if I'm ever asked to bring a bean dip, this will be what I make.  Yum!

Brown Butter Chicken & Rice

 On the back of the Herbed Skillet Pastitisio recipe page, there's another appealing picture for a recipe called Brown Butter Chicken & Rice.  Just a couple of ingredients, and a quick amount of time brought this recipe together.

I really liked how easy the recipe was to cook, and I loved the aroma of spices that I was using.  But the recipe had some problems, too.  I struggle cooking regular white rice outside of my rice cooker, and this time was no exception.  The rice was undercooked and crunchy--not a good thing for my husband who doesn't like rice.  Green beans are out of season, and canned beans just didn't add anything special.

In the end, I liked the chicken and the flavor of the rice,  my oldest did too; but we were alone in our approval of this recipe.  That makes this recipe get 2 stars and the recipe gets tossed.