Recipe:Vegan Bachelor Chow

Ingredients
1 can corn

1 can black beans

1 can vegetable broth

2 cans diced tomatoes

(or if you have fresh ingredients, lucky you. Where it says “1 can” use about 15 oz.)

Method
Make sure you didn’t accidentally buy creamed corn. It’s an easy mistake to make. Nothing really wrong with it, but that’s a different soup. Open every can except the black beans, dump it into a large pot and crank up the heat. This stuff isn’t just delicious, cheap, and good for you, it is also FAST.

Open the black beans, pour into a strainer over the sink. Or a colander. But if you use a colander, be sure to extend your pinkies, you la-di-da foodie. Rinse thoroughly to wash off that gross bean juice. You MUST NOT skip this step. On the other hand, this is as close to actual cooking as you’re going to come while you’re making this stuff. After rinsing, add the beans to the pot. Stir it up a little, once it’s hot it’s done.

It’s fine like that, but if you want to jazz it up, garlic, carrots, celery, green peppers and onions all get along well with it – that may take a little longer cooking though. After it’s boiling, turn it down, let it simmer about half an hour.

Season to taste. Five-spice or cumin and ground red pepper make it very chili-like. Sriracha is great on everything except the human eye unless you’re going to eat your eye but also please don’t eat your eye. Add salt if it’s not briny enough for you.

Beside crackers, you can eat it with most kinds of rice (though it’s a little weird with wild rice) or pasta. If you have a box of Mac n Cheez around, just boil up the noodles (throw out that envelope that comes in the box) and add to the soup for a Chili-mac sort of effect.

As a bachelor, or bachelorette, but actually bachelor, you will generally be eating this alone. If you have a guest it is customary to intone when serving, “Consumption is the key to YOUR survival!”