One question that constantly plagues my husband and I is “what do you want for dinner?” This is one of my most hated questions, especially when we can’t seem to come up with a good answer, and even after suggesting all recipes that I have in my repertoire, we still can’t come up with something that we really want to eat. If I were to leave it up to my husband, he would make his flank steak and potatoes with broccoli. Not really my type of meal.
So, with the weather getting nice, and summer just around the corner (although looking outside, it looks like it is about to rain), I felt like a salad would make a good dinner. But, I didn’t want just your standard lettuce, tomato and cucumber type salad. Can you say b-o-r-i-n-g?? I started searching for different salads on the internet, and combined a few that I saw into this salad.
You know that feeling that you get after eating your traditional salad? The one that makes your feel not even close to being full, and leaves you thinking about walking to the fridge to see what else you can eat? This salad doesn’t do this. You actually feel satisfied after this salad because of the protein in the black beans. Next time, I might even add black eyed peas as well…
Makes enough for 4 people
Salad
3 cups romaine lettuce, finely chopped
2 Roma tomatoes, finely diced
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
3 green onions, chopped
¼ cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese, grated
½ green pepper, finely chopped
1 19oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
Dressing
¾ cup salsa
¾ cup sour cream
In a large bowl, combine all salad ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together salsa and sour cream to make the dressing. Pour dressing on top of salad.
I served it with corn muffins. Actually, I crumbled the corn muffins into the salad sort of like croutons. I usually make things from scratch, however, today I was lazy, so I used an organic corn muffin mix. If you are doing this, try to stick to an organic brand. Some of the traditional brands have too many ingredients in them that I can’t pronounce, therefore I don’t buy them.
You could make this without the corn muffins, but I found that it gave the salad a sort of sweetness that seemed to complete the salad. I know it sounds strange to crumble them into the salad, but try it, you may like it.
