Once upon a time..Gulf of Mexico Sunset

How beautiful are dried black beans?

Let's get down to business...

I made an early dinner of black bean and corn salad with a summer salad. When I went to the expo this past weekend, I attended a class titled, "What's fresh near you?" and the presenter did a "cooking demonstration" with the recipes to follow.

Black bean and corn salad:

Ingredients:

Dressing:

•  2T lime juice
•  4T evoo
•  clove garlic
• salt to taste
• pinch cayenne pepper

Chopped items

•  1 15oz can black beans (or 2/3 cooked dried..what i did!)
• 1 cup fresh or frozen thawed corn
•  1 avocado (mine wasn't ripe enough)
•  1 red pepper
•  1 tomato
•  3 green onions
•  1/4 cup cilantro, chopped..
• and i added 4 tablespoons of salsa

Mix the ingredients for the dressing in a jar or tupperware and shake, shake, shake. set aside.

Take all of the other chopped ingredients and mix together...then add the dressing and stiiiiiir...and serve:)

The other salad you see pictured is truly delicious. The dressing is what makes it.

Dressing:

•  3 tablespoons low-fat sour cream OR plain greek yogurt (i did this!)
•  2 T honey
• 1/4 olive oil
•  1 tablespoon mild vinegar, like rice wine or just white. i think red would work, too.
•  Ground pepper
• little bit of salt. 

Other ingredients:

• Spring mix blend
• Blue cheese crumbles 
• Blueberries

Mix everything, shake it. Then grab the salad, some blueberries, and blue cheese (Stilton or Goronzola will work, too)...BAM, really delicious. you only need a little bit of the dressing and the rest can be stored in the fridge.

Enough of that, what you really want to see was dessert! When I was browsing my usual blogs this morning, I came across these Frozen Banana Bites from www.neverhomemaker.com(<---great blog, by the way).

I will let you guys visit their blog for the recipe...but let me tell you, they are so simple and so delicious. I demand you to make some right now.

I added toothpicks into mine and it was lovely. I was thinking if you chopped up pretzels and somehow added that into the chocolate that it would give a nice crunch salt to the mix. We'll see!

We spent the rest of the night on Indian Rocks beach watching the sunset and eating ice cream cones...

I'm too sexy for this beach, I'm too sexy for a full bathing suit...

Caught in the act!!