Our days off and a recipe for black bean and corn salad

Matt and I finally had two days off together for the first time in quite a while.  My boss is really good about trying to make my schedule work with Matt's but, with work being busy, sometimes things just don't work out. 

On our weekend off together, we went to yard sales, the farmers market, stopped in town for ice cream, soaked up some sun on the beach and just sat on our porch, watched the ocean and enjoyed the beautiful weather.  Needless to say, blogging didn't really cross my mind.

I was also able to get through a good chunk of a book that I'm reading, titled Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.).  It was sent to me a while ago by Matt's mom and I finally had some time to really dive into it.  If you have ever considered starting a garden or buying your produce locally, read this book and I believe that you will, at the very least, give some serious thought about the items you are placing in your grocery cart.  I know that I will.  My goal this summer is to try and purchase most of my produce from local growers at the farmer's market.  Maybe by the time I'm finished with the book I will be so inspired that I'll stop tripping over myself because I'm sprinting out the door to get to the store to grab a box of corn flakes for $0.50 (side note... industrialized corn and soy beans are major players in our nation's problem with obesity and a huge reason why we've lost so many small farms in the past few decades).

And, because I'm not much of a believer in being an extremist...  Here is a recipe for black bean and corn salad that we made on one of our days off (I bought a frozen bag of corn for $0.15 at Publix the other day).
One of these days I would like to live off the land a little more and rely less on coupons.  One of these days...  But not yet.

I once bought a black bean and corn salad from Starbucks for about $4 and, although really tasty, it was waaaay overpriced.  I made a similar salad for less than $0.50/serving.

Black Bean and Corn Salad

In a bowl, mix together:

Black beans (I use canned)
Corn kernels (Canned, frozen or fresh)
Chopped Cilantro
Diced tomato (I used canned because I had some leftover but, of course, you can use fresh)
Diced jalapeno (if you like a little heat)
Clove of garlic
Chopped onion or green onion
Squeeze of lime juice
Pinch of cumin
Pinch of sugar
Salt and pepper