Pasta with Black Beans and Kale

From a Reader's Digest cookbook that I've had longer than I remember, but which I never really use anymore. I came across this recipe a while back and the idea of using black beans in a pasta sauce intrigued me. They combine with the cheese to make a very tasty and creamy sauce. I bought a prepared bag of kale from my local supermarket, but if you can't find it then spinach would be a good alternative.

Roasted Pepper Soup

As the Starks would say: Winter is coming. And in my house that means one thing: soup!

This is a relatively simple soup recipe but it is still very tasty. I used shallots but you could just use onions instead. This soup uses a couple of potatoes to bulk it up; I cooked the potatoes in the stock to be included in the soup, so as to retain the starch for thickness. The resulting soup was very thick (how I like it) but if you prefer a thinner soup, or you want it less starchy, you could cook and drain the potatoes before adding to stock, or use slightly more stock.