Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Meatless Monday with Mindy # 22 Vegetable Chili

Welcome to Meatless Monday with Mindy!

The cool weather is still sticking around for the first full week of August, 2013. We've had our windows open every day for a few weeks now.  It sure is saving us from using the air conditioner, and I love the cooler weather, but it just seems too odd to be this cool in August. 

This cooler weather is keeping me in comfort food mode and today was no exception.  I was wanting that type of meal, but being summer, still wanting the ease of fixing something quick where I didn't have to have the oven on or stand over a hot stove.

This recipe, that I tweaked from my Nutribullet cookbook, fit the bill.  This book is chock full of smoothie recipes, but also has some really good and good for you lunch and dinner dishes in the back. I tweaked it ever so slightly (as I tend to do with most recipes) to use what ingredients I had on hand. And believe it or not, the original recipe did NOT use chili powder!  How can it be a chili without chili powder??? But then there is the Hatfield and McCoy syndrome here too, to bean, or not to bean.  Well, this is definitely full of beans and the not so typical veggies! For those of you who may be beef lovers, you'll not find any here, but I bet you'll like it none-the-less. 

This recipe is easy to put together. To make it even faster to assemble, buy pre-chopped veggies at your grocer. Feel free to use whatever veggies you have on hand as well as the beans. I personally liked the variety of beans in this dish but you could go with all one kind if you needed to. 




Vegetable Chili

1/2 Tbs olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
2 cans of diced tomatoes (One of my cans was fire roasted tomatoes)
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped zucchini
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped bell pepper
1/2 poblano pepper or 1 large jalapeƱo, chopped and some seeds left in for heat, optional
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
2 Tbs dried oregano
1/2 cup vegetable broth
4 oz chili powder

Add olive oil to to a large stock pan over medium heat.  Once the oil is hot, add in the onions, peppers, carrots, celery and zucchini and cook until the veggies just start to become tender.






Next, add in the beans.





Then add the tomatoes, garlic, oregano and broth. Stir all this goodness up.



And it isn't chili without chili powder. For goodness sake, add chili powder! You can add more or less depending on your taste preference. The 4 oz I added was just the right amount of flavor. If you want more heat, I would suggest using more pepper flakes from your poblano or add red pepper flakes or cayenne if you're serious about heat.




Bring this mixture to a boil while stirring to combine all the flavors.  Once it boils, put a lid on it and turn down the heat to simmer, then wait patiently if you can for about 1 hour. This allows the flavors to meld beautifully together.  You'll want to stir this occasionally to prevent sticking.

Serve it up and eat it while it's hot.  It's even better the next day!




I hope you are enjoying the recipes I share on here.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on these. Would you take the time to leave me a comment?

If you have a blog and want to link up here, join me by clicking on the blue frog below.


All photo's were taken by my honey.  You can see some behind the scene photo shots over at his blog at Photography Musings by Dave 



6 comments:

Dave said...

This was another good and satisfying meal. And on a side note - I've said it before and will say it again - I like the way you write. Good job.

The Howell Blessings said...

Thank you for the compliment. And thanks for being my photographer!

Jenny said...

Here is the link to the recipe I made on Monday:
http://plantpoweredkitchen.com/vegan-soup-for-the-soul/

I left out the garlic (accidentally) and dill (purposely) and since I didn't have cumin seeds, i just added extra cumin.
I also just mashed it in the pot a bit instead of blending, as my honey likes "meaty" soups. It was a rave! Might add some white beans next time for a creamy-ness....but it was perfect just like it was!

The Howell Blessings said...

This sounds really good! I am definitely in soup mode these days.

Mike said...

looks good. You should put the recipe name in the title of each post because you cant always tell what it is from the cover picture.

The Howell Blessings said...

Thanks Mike, that was a good suggestion. I've already implemented that and retro'd it to the past posts as well. I also have a tab at the top of the blog that says "recipes" and you can search all the recipes that way too. Thanks for the suggestion!