My favorite recipes all have two things in common: They’re easy and they’re delicious. This one’s both.

This dip’s about as easy as it comes. There’s no cooking or processing. Just mix all the ingredients and voila! (Or whatever the Mexican equivalent of voila is.)

Make sure to soak the onions before adding them to the dip. Soaking them takes away the sharp bite that raw onions have so they don’t overpower the rest of the ingredients. You can add some diced avocado in as well for an added touch.

Cowboy Caviar

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 0 minutes

Ingredients(Serves about 6 people):

• 1/2 large red or white onion
• 1 cup black beans
• 1/2 cup salsa
• 3/4 cup corn kernels
• 1 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Method:

1. Dice the onion with a sharp knife.
2. Soak the diced onion in cold water for 5 minutes to remove the raw onion bite.
3. While the onion’s soaking, mix the rest of the ingredients together in a large bowl.
4. Strain the water from the onion and add it to the mixture.
5. Mix well. Serve at room temperature.

I usually avoid blogging reviews and non-food topics these days but this one’s a little different. The company I work for, Likeable Local, recently launched a new app called storytellit and I’d love to share it with you and get your feedback.

Storytellit is a free social media tool you can use on your desktop or on your phone. It was designed to make social media fun and easy for people who might have a hard time understanding more complex apps like Hootsuite or Buffer.

We give you content or prompts to post with the click of a button while making sure it stays personal and relevant. Using the app is extremely simple; you can break it down into 4 steps:

1. Sign up and link your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn accounts.
2. Pick a post or prompt and fill in the blank.
3. Choose what accounts to send it to.
4. Schedule it to post later or right away.

Besides using a premade post, you can also write your own and upload a photo using the app. For every action you do, you get points and unlock badges that are meant to guide people less familiar with social media towards good practices in a fun and easy way.

Signing up is free. All you have to do is submit your email address and you’ll get a password sent to you. There are currently 11 small business professions with content you can opt in on but there’s plenty of general content for anyone to use, too.

Now for the nitty-gritty disclosure: We’re having an in-office competition to see who can get the most people to sign up and use the app. All of the sign-up links I shared are tracking links that give me points in the competition. But at the end of the day I’m sharing it because I think it’s a great app that will only get better with more people using it. I’d love for you to sign up, try it out, and if you have any suggestions send us feedback in the comment box on how we can make it better.

Last week I got the chance to meet up with Matt, the No Meat Athlete, in New York after getting an early copy of his new book(!!). The last time I met up with Matt was when he was running the Boston Marathon; since then he’s run a 100-miler and started plans to run a sub 3-hour marathon, so it’s safe to say he’s been busy.

The book covered a lot of the same topics you’d find on Matt’s blog from running/workout advice, recipes, anecdotes and more. I’ve taken a hiatus from running recently and have plenty of pages bookmarked to go back to when I get my next fitness itch.

Of course I was drawn to the recipe section, including the easy peanut butter sauce shown above. The book advocates a plant-based diet, a flexible term which means different things for different people. However you eat it’s a good reminder that you can always use more fruits and vegetables(this definitely rings true for me).

I got the chance to ask Matt a few questions about food, fitness, and the topics in his book.

A lot of the recipes in your book are more like math formulas; why is that?

I think the obvious answer is that it’s because I studied math in grad and school and my mind just works that way, but the real reason is that food for me is more about practicality than it is art. With ultrarunning and kids and writing and everything else, I have less time for cooking than I used to, so it’s helpful to have a template you can use, say, to throw together a veggie burger with the ingredients you happen to have on hand. I think a lot of people find themselves without a whole lot of time or energy to spend on food, and having formulas that you can use over and over with different ingredients, is really convenient.

I once had a blog with the very hokey name “Food Makes Fun Fuel.” What would you say is your most fun fuel for your workouts?

Fresh dates! The ones with the pits in them, so they’re still soft and have an incredible flavor. They taste like candy, but they’re nutritionally very similar to energy gels and are compact, too, so you can carry a few with you when you run and know that you’re fueling with something far healthier than processed gels.

What’s your favorite indulgence food?

Does beer count? Assuming it doesn’t, then pizza. It was the hardest thing for me to give up when I went vegan, but as much as I hated Daiya vegan cheese at first, I eventually got used to it. Now I can make or order a vegan pizza with Daiya and honestly I don’t enjoy it any less than I used to when it had real cheese. It’s so easy to make dough at home, too, and a lot of times I change it up with BBQ sauce and red onions, or even homemade Caesar dressing as the sauce and lettuce and grilled tempeh to top it.

What’s been your biggest sense of joy from your years of blogging?

Wow, great question. I’ve come to really appreciate how important it is that blogs allow anyone to pick themselves (as Seth Godin put it), instead of sitting around waiting for the publisher or the record label or whoever else to “pick” you. You can just start writing, sharing your ideas, your food, your music, etc. And then it’s just up to the audience to decide if your work and your message are good enough. The gatekeepers don’t have the power anymore, and if you want to do something special, it’s up to you to do it and you don’t need to wait for someone to tell you it’s okay. And blogs, as simple as they seem, are the most important tool for doing that.

What food, lifestyle, or fitness blogs do you check most frequently?

Zen Habits (zenhabits.net) and Tim Ferriss’ blog (fourhourworkweek.com/blog) are some of my favorites; both are more in the “lifestyle” category than anything else. For food blogs and recipes, I’m a huge fan of Oh She Glows (ohsheglows.com) and Choosing Raw (choosingraw.com) — they almost always have a healthy, vegan version of whatever it is I’m trying to make.

What 3 ingredients should everyone who’s reading this add to their weekly grocery list?

1. Baby kale. It’s not as bitter and tough as the regular stuff, so it works really well raw, in smoothies, in salads, and on sandwiches, and it’s one of the most nutrient dense foods you can eat.
2. Hummus. Spread it on a bagel, dip broccoli, carrots, and cucumbers in it, make a simple sandwich by spreading it on sprouted bread and topping with some kale, or use it in a wrap or pita for long run fuel.
3. Raw trail mix. It’s not really an ingredient, I know, but I eat it all the time — it’s a great way to get in a bunch of nutritious calories while you’re traveling or for between-meal snacking. If I’m in a pinch for breakfast on the road, a few big handfuls of trail mix with a banana or apple gets me by.

Congrats Matt on the book and for being an inspiration to so many!

I’ve had a really great time with this blog for the past 3 years—obviously I wouldn’t still be posting if I didn’t love it. But there’s only been so much I could do with a blog, a camera, and minimal knowledge of technology(seriously, you don’t learn enough about html coding when you get a degree in Ancient Greek and Latin.)

So I may not be smart enough to know what I’m doing half the time on my own website but I was smart enough to partner with Ziplist. 

Ziplist is an online recipe box that automatically saves a recipe to your own personal account with a simple click of the button. That’s why you’ll find a “Save this recipe” button at the top and bottom of every post now and a “Recipe Box” tab on the navigation bar with drop down options. Create an account, tap it, and you automatically have access to a recipe box, automated grocery list and coupon database.

BUT(and here’s my favorite part), this doesn’t just apply for this website. It applies for every website Ziplist is affiliated with that has “Save this recipe” buttons, which includes a huge list of big food websites as well as other food blogs like Simply Recipes and Recipe Girl. One account gives you access to an internet of recipes—how cool is that?

I think it’s safe to say I’m excited about this. The last time I did something techie for this website was adding a “print this” button to every recipe, and I think we can all agree that this is way cooler.

I hope you guys will make an account and use it, but if you choose to ignore it completely that’s fine, too. It’s all meant to add to the recipe-reading and experience and not take anything away. Have fun with it and happy cooking 🙂