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 jalapeño, 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?

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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