Sunday, February 22, 2009

Chili and a boring pizza

This Chili recipe is a basic chili that can be tweaked in many ways. We have even used a version of this to enter and win third place in a Vegetarian Chili Cook-off.

Chili

1 TBS oil
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 large onion, diced
6 cloves of garlic
1 4oz can green chilies
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. pepper
3 TBS chili powder
1 TBS cumin
1 8oz can tomato sauce
2 15oz cans diced tomatoes
2 cans beans (pinto, kidney, or black)
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups TVP

Heat the oil over medium high heat. Saute the onion for about 4 minutes. Add the green bell pepper and saute for 4 more minutes. Add the garlic, green chilies, salt, pepper, chili powder and cumin. Stir to coat the onions and peppers in the spices. Lower the heat to low and add the beans, tomato sauce, tomatoes, water and TVP. Raise the heat and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

Serve with saltines or cornbread or as Frito pie--YUM!

You can use any combination of beans that you like in this recipe. I like pinto and kidney best. You can also make this as spicy as you want. The recipe as written is mild. To make it spicier you can use 2 cans of green chilies or use beans with jalapenos added or add some cayenne.
You can also use more or less water to make this thicker or thinner. It will thicken as it cooks.

Here is a pretty boring pizza I made. It was kind of a pain to make because of a few things. First, I was making it while trying to not ignore my kids. I usually cook during nap times but this was not nap time. Second, I made the sauce from Vegan with a Vengeance and it called for 4 tsp of salt. I thought that seemed like a lot, but for some reason I went ahead and put all 4 tsp. in. Yuck! I didn't want to make a whole new batch of sauce though, so I added a can of diced tomatoes. This helped, along with just spreading it thinly on the pizza. Third, my can opener broke and I was having no fun trying to open cans. So by the time it got around to topping the pizza I was a mess and was in no mood to do it. So I put on some mushrooms and Italian Sausage and called it a day. When I originally set out to make pizza I was planning on making Melty Pizza Cheese from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Twenty Minutes to Dinner. One of these days I'll try it. I wish I would have remembered the roasted red bells and the Vegan Parmesan that I had in the fridge. Oh well. I had no problems eating half of it in one sitting.

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