Everybody seems to have a favorite chili recipe, but I generally just wing it. I do from time to time stick to my mom’s method (see a post from November 13, 2012) but as often as not I do some type of vegetarian chili. Since the weather had cooled and I had a mess of cooked red beans on hand, I decided it was going to be easy to put dinner together. I sautéed a big chopped onion and a few minced cloves of garlic in a little canola oil. I added a large can of plum tomatoes (that I had squished), a medium can of tomato puree, a couple of dollops of tomato paste along with 4 chopped carrots, 2 chopped zucchini, 1 chopped red bell pepper, 1 minced jalapeño, and some mushrooms that were needing to be cooked. To be honest the additions were based solely on what I had on hand. Seasoned the mix with a good amount of seasoned chili powder, ground cumin, oregano, and red pepper flakes and, of course, salt and pepper. Had I had some winter squash or sweet potatoes on hand I would have added either of those also. I added the cooking liquid from the beans and then let the vegetable mix cook for a while before adding the cooked beans as they were already pretty soft and didn’t really need much more cooking. I baked some corn muffins, quickly tossed a green salad, and Eh! Voila! dinner was on the table and we had lunch ready to go to our besties at Loupe Digital.
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