Tonight we made Cheddar-Cheese Grits with Spicy Black Beans. Tony describes our dinner:

We don’t make this dish very often, but I’m not sure why, because not only is it quick, easy, and delicious, but it is also one of the few dishes we make with leftovers in mind. Since we try to have at least one vegetarian dinner each week, it has that going for it, which is nice.

There isn’t a lot of prep involved, as you only need to grate 1/4 pound of cheddar, cut two bell peppers into 3/4 inch pieces, and slice up six scallions. This only took me about 10 or 15 minutes. (I decided that since the tomatoes get added at the very end, I would chop those while everything else was cooking.) I put everything into the fridge and waited for Kim to get home before starting to cook.

The best part about this recipe is that you can cook the grits and the vegetable/bean mixture at the same time. The recipe calls for cooking the grits for 5 to 10 minutes (they’ve never taken me less than 10) and the vegetables and beans for 10, so it’s not hard to coordinate everything. The only other change I made was to used smoked paprika instead of regular, which gave everything an extra dimension of flavor.