It’s no secret that I’ve been meaning to continue learning how to cook new things this year. This extends to using the crock pot that I inherited from my grandmother’s stash. And since half of my life lately seems to be motivated by finishing Scavenger Hunt 101, knocking #63 (a kitchen appliance) off while I’m accomplishing a 30 before 30 goal at the same time? Obvious.

After a brief poll on twitter, I decided to go with Marianne’s Slow Cooked Black Bean Soup, because my black bean-obsessed phase doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon. I used leftover gift cards to buy a cheap immersion blender, and dusted Ghami’s crock pot off. Marianne cooked her soup in a much larger crock pot than the one I have, so I cut the recipe in half.

Things worked out so that my sister was over to enjoy this easy dinner with me, and let me tell you – this was SO tasty, and coming home to a good-smelling apartment that contained dinner that was ALREADY COOKED? Felt awfully luxurious. The soup ended up on the spicier side, which would probably be good for most people, but for my weakling’s palate, one habanero seemed just a touch too spicy. (I forget that when I use one in chili, the recipe itself is much bigger so the impact is smaller. And actually, I just wrote “one hot pepper” on my grocery list, so didn’t remember to try to look for the chipotles that Marianne used.)

So I learned not only that the crock pot is as great as it seems like it would be, but also that non-canned beans aren’t nearly as much of a hassle as I had originally assumed. And! I didn’t even splatter my entire kitchen with black beans while using the immersion blender. So I’d call that a pretty damn successful dinner.