New Year's Eve Soup and 7 Layer Dip

I'm going over to a friend's house tonight to celebrate my New Year's Eve with the girls.  We're going to have appetizers and cocktails and pizza.  I decided that I would take 7 Layer Dip.  The recipe on Namely Marly looks sinful!  I'm going to make a couple of changes to the recipe, but not many.

I'll be mixing vegetarian refried beans with salsa as the base and adding freshly cooked black beans (from dry) as another layer.  I don't have regular tomatoes, so I'll be chopping grape tomatoes to add as the top garnish.  Also, instead of soy crumbles as a layer, I'll be making the meat in the Fool Your Friends Tacos recipe from Vegan Comfort Foods as one of the layers.  (It's the third recipe down.)  I've made it before and it is very good and could, literally, fool your friends.

Now, I'm making Southwestern Black Bean and Corn Chowder from Vegan on the Cheap.  This is a repeat recipe for me, but a darn tasty one.  I love this soup and it's very easy to pull together.  I didn't have any canned or frozen black beans, so I had to make some from dry in my pressure cooker.  But, the extra time it takes to make the black beans from dry is well worth it.  I have some leftover brown rice, so I think I'll put a 1/2 cup in my bowl before ladling in the soup.

It seems to be a bean cooking kind of day.  I just spread the black beans out on a large cookie sheet and put them in the freezer to freeze enough for me to put them in a baggie so I can pull some out at will.  Then, I cleaned out my pressure cooker and loaded it with 3 cups of dry chickpeas.  I have been out of cooked chickpeas for a month and it's been killing me.  Since I have cooked them from dry, I prefer them this way and haven't been buying canned beans.  They are extremely easy to make and once frozen, are extremely easy to use.  Plus, my dogs absolutely LOVE cooked chickpeas and I toss them to them as treats.  They even like them frozen.

I'll be prepared for the coming work week after taking some time to cook this weekend.  I hope you all have a fantastic and safe New Year's Eve and that 2011 is filled with blessings.