NEW RECIPE! Smoky Black Bean & Bacon Stew with Avocado and Fried Egg

It's hard not to enjoy black bean soup. It's rich and dark, a perfect cold-weather recipe, and virtuous too--both calorically and financially. Black bean soup is a simple classic, and should therefore not be tweaked, added to, or substantially changed.

Or, instead, we could do all of those things! We could seek to improve black bean soup--nay, perfect it. 

"Perfect it?!?!" you gasp. "But how?"

"With bacon," I say. "With bacon."

Yes, dear friends, dear readers: We can make our black bean soup with bacon. Then, we can play off the rich bacon with smoky chipotle and sweet garlic and let the soup slowly cook down into a thick, hearty stew. We can load up the toppings: sour cream to offset the smoke and heat; fried egg for protein; avocado for healthy fats and texture. Finally we can serve the whole mess with the afterthought of some greenery: a little chopped scallion to make it look as though we went to trouble (we didn't, of course; the whole thing was quite easy).

Et voilà--a delicious, dark, filling meal, served in a single bowl. (Recipe after the jump!)

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Super Fast Dinner Idea: Avocado and Chicken Open-Faced Sandwiches

We've all felt that...feeling. Exhausted, uninspired, and hungry RIGHT NOW. Sometimes, you just don't feel like carefully crafting the dish of your dreams. You could make something from a box, but that means you're locked into whatever shelf-stable ingredients and chemicals, healthy or otherwise, the manufacturer included.

Here at Hungry Sam, we feel that you can do better. That's why I try to offer reasonably easy and cheap ideas (e.g. oven "fried" plantains) alongside more intense recipes (e.g. chicken, shrimp, and sausage paella). So if you're feeling that unhappy feeling, here's a super fast dinner or lunch idea:

If I were feeling snooty, I might call this a "deconstructed chipotle chicken-avocado salad sandwich."

Instructions after the jump!

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