More Vegetarian Soup That Doesn't Suck (and some that does, too)

A picked up a can of black bean and vegetable soup for us at the local healthy, largely organic store (you know, the $8.99 per pound of organic ground beef store). It was horrid. Bland, mushy black beans, with bland, mushy vegetables. Since my favorite black bean soups involve bacon, sausage, or at the very least meat-based stock, I'm not the best person to look to for a tasty vegetarian black bean soup. I could probably, however, do better than that one.

Here is a vegetarian soup that tastes quite lovely:

Creamy Chick Pea and Spinach Soup

I think you could easily make it vegan by replacing the heavy cream with coconut milk, as long as you didn't use the reduced fat kind. It would mingle nicely with the middle Eastern spices.

Stupidly Easy and Delicious Brownies - In the Microwave!

The other day I was craving brownies, and I had ribs stewing in the oven. So, I looked on the internet for a recipe for microwave brownies. I skeptically tried the one I found, thinking "this could be awful," and to my surprise they were dense, chewy, rich, not heavy, and all around delightful. And stupidly easy to make:

• Cream together 1 cup of sugar (I used berry sugar, since I had some) and 1/2 cup softened butter
• Beat two eggs and a tsp of vanilla extract into the sugar mixture
• Mix in 1/2 cup each of cocoa powder and white flour

Pour the brownie batter into a greased and sugared 8-9" round glass baking dish (every version of the recipe says round, so that's what I did). Microwave, uncovered, on 50% power for 8 minutes. Check the brownies and if they aren't quite done, give them another 2 minutes or so, still on 50% power. Let the brownies sit for a few minutes before digging in.
I'm sure you could add nuts, if you wanted to. You could ice the brownies, but they're so rich it would really be gilding the lily. In any case, eating them warm with vanilla bean ice cream is marvellous. And did I mention how easy they were to make?