Cooking, working; working, cooking. We bought a substantial box of very ripe figs at the market yesterday and so I'm making a little half-batch of simple fig preserves with what was left over after we had some for desert yesterday with whipped ricotta and almonds. The big surprise hit recipe of the weekend, though, was a black bean and corn salad from Rachael Ray (of all people?). S. and I often wind up watching her show without sound when we go to the gym -- she's awfully perky, but she seems to do a nice job of choosing recipes for good, real food that you can make quickly rather than going through horrible contortions to make things quick that never should have been, and judging by the comments on the Food Network recipe pages she is a fine influence for encouraging people to have the confidence to cook from scratch.

Anyway, I read a recommendation for this recipe in particular somewhere and verily, it is good. Sorry I can't remember where I read about it, but thanks, whoever you were. The recipe, paraphrased for posterity, is below. It is very very very very easy.

I made black beans from dried because that's what I had. The original recipe calls for canned, and I'm sure that would also taste great -- black beans from a can are just fine by me. I also used a nice variation on the usual frozen corn that I bought at Trader Joes. These are frozen roasted corn kernels, and it is not surprising that they work well here. But again, I'm positive that ordinary ones are fine too.

INGREDIENTS
14 oz or so of cooked black beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups frozen corn kernels
1 small red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1/2 large red onion, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons or so ground cumin (half a palmful)
Tabasco or other hot sauce to taste
Juice of 1 lemon or 1 lime
2 tablespoons or so of olive oil
Salt and pepper

TO DO
Mix everything together. Let stand at least 15 minutes, until the corn is thawed, and mix again. This will magically chill the other ingredients, so if you're planning to serve it right away, it will be pleasantly cool with no need to refrigerate. If you want to save it for later, though, obviously you should put it in the fridge.