I made the best chili tonight, and wanted to get it down here so I can remember how to make it.
- 1 smallish onion, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
- splash of olive oil
- 1 smallish red bell pepper, seeded and coarsely chopped
- 1 smallish green bell pepper, seeded and coarsely chopped
- 2 cans tomatoes, undrained
- 2 cans beans, rinsed and drained (I used black beans for this one)
- most of 1 can tomato paste
- pinch each of herbes de provence, sage, rosemary, crushed red pepper, cumin
- chili powder
Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil until the onion starts to brown on the edges. Toss in the bell pepper, and saute some more.Pour in the tomatoes and, if they’re not diced already, break them up with your spoon. Stir in the beans and tomato paste and mix well. Add your seasonings to taste (the reason it had sage, rosemary, and herbes de provence is because it started its life as spaghetti sauce). Cover and simmer for a while. When you can’t stand waiting any longer, serve it up. I had it with whole grain penne, but it would be good over rice or couscous or cornbread.
I’m not sure what triggered the craving, but suddenly this afternoon I wanted cornbread so badly I could hardly stand it. So I looked up a vegan cornbread recipe and made sure I had all the ingredients. And then I thought chili sounded great. So I stopped at the farmers market on the way home and got some lovely vegetables and a little fruit. When I got home and started getting everything into the pot, however, Joe said he wanted spaghetti instead. So we made spaghetti sauce.
But as it simmered, I realized that I really wanted chili still. I poured about 1/3 of the sauce into a separate pot and added the chili stuff, using a little extra chili powder to atone for the spaghetti seasonings. Joe thought it looked good, and poured some more spaghetti sauce into the mixture. So yeah. Chili. Mmmmm.
The cornbread was a recipe I found at Post Punk Kitchen, and you can find it here. It was my first foray into vegan baking, and it came out pretty well. However, pay attention to Isa’s instructions to line your pan with parchment paper. I didn’t, and getting that bread out is going to be a booger. I like my cornbread to be thicker, so I used a smaller pan. That meant, however, that it took longer to cook, so bear that in mind. Also, it tasted really gross to me when I took my first bite. It had very little salt, so I ground just a weensy bit of salt onto my slice. That made all the difference. Next time I make it, I’ll put a little more salt in the batter. Otherwise, it seems to be a goof-proof recipe. The instructions read to stir the oil and syrup (I used agave nectar) into the soured soy milk, but I poured it into the cornmeal mixture before I read it.
Today, then, this new vegan ate:
2 apples, 2 blood oranges, 1 banana (this fruit only for breakfast is hard for me)
a little homemade hummus and a spelt flatboard
about 3/4ths of an Amy’s Organic Brown Rice, Beans & Veggies bowl
a small bowl of chili with whole wheat penne and a slice of cornbread