Terrifying Chili

Today I am venturing out with my recipe. I've been trying to do at least one thing every week that makes me nervous because I think it's probably good for me. I try to find a recipe that uses ingredients that I recognize, but that I can't imagine the combination of in my head. In addition to the one thing every week that makes me nervous, David and I have decided that he will find two or three recipes every week.

Normally what ends up happening is on the weekends or when he has less homework, he will come to me and say “hey Char, you've been doing the cooking all week. Go sit down. I'LL be taking care of this one tonight!!!” Which is great of him to notice and show his appreciation by helping. The only problem is that if I was the one to find the recipes, and put all the ingredients together, he has no idea how to make anything on the weekly menu. So then I end up getting up and down like 6 or 7 times while he makes food. I also end up cutting the onions, and once I start cutting onions, I just cut everything else because I happen to be faster than he is at slicin' and dicin'. In addition, if David doesn't quite, know how to make something, or he doesn't know the expected taste outcome, he inevitably ends up adding Parmesan cheese where it does not belong. (In his head Parmesan cheese is like another spice.)

So without further ado, I will first list our menu for the week briefly, and then I will explain this Terrifying Chili that I have attempted to make today. We'll see.

This Week:

-Chicken Drumsticks, broccoli, cheese sauce

-Yogurt and Parmesan cheese chicken baked with boiled brussels sprouts (boiled is the fastest and most thorough, new chicken recipe but looked fairly straightforward, was not exciting enough to blog about and it will be a good back up recipe on super lazy nights/when David leaves for Christmas.)

-Black Bean, Sweet Potato and Quinoa Chili (aka Terrifying Chili)

-Tortilla Chicken Soup (tried to make this once, turned out bean goop, trying it with crock pot and no fear this time.)

-Pork Fajitas (We usually do chicken but David decided to mix it up, if you're not a home made fajita regular, just wait til you hear the secret ingredient, omg)

-Spinach Pasta (David Recipe)

-Chicken Stir-Fry (David Recipe)

Total $: Around $50 (we were under budget so we stocked up on some spices that we've been cheating on recently)

The goal every week is to have at least one green thing/something from the produce section besides onions and potatoes, on the plate every night.

Terrifying Chili:

*Usually my chili consists of tons and tons of tomatoes, a can of corn, bell peppers, onion, ground beef, and an amazing chili seasoning. Am I missing anything Dad? I think that's it.

Original recipe can be found HERE.

Ingredients that I used:

*NOTE: This list looks long and intimidating but you will find that you most likely have a majority of these ingredients in your kitchen already. hence, the brilliance of this recipe*

1 Tsp. Olive oil

1 small/medium onion, diced

2 heaping spoonfuls of minced garlic

1 big handful of chopped baby carrots (much easier and cheaper than buying two big carrots, cleaning, peeling, dicing, and having half a carrot left over and no bunny to feed it to)

½ tsp. Turmeric (Never used it before. Eek)

¼ tsp cinnamon (this part should be exciting)

shake of nutmeg (christmassy I think?)

1 teaspoon cumin (we've been substituting a combo of paprika, mustard powder, and chili powder for this. Anyone know if that makes sense or not?)

2 Tsp. Chili powder (my second favorite ingredient to life)

1 tsp. Smoked Chipotle Tabasco sauce (how to I explain this, Tabasco sauce freaks me out and kind of grosses me out a little, and I have no idea why, my irrational fear only worsened when I actually poured it into the crock pot.)

Salt to taste

1 can (15 ish oz. )tomato sauce

2 cups cooked red quinoa (this is the only kind I can ever find at the grocery store. This is also the most expensive ingredient besides the Tabasco sauce if you don't already have that in your house)

1 bag of dried black beans

3 cups of chicken stock (or chicken legs from last night left in the crock pot overnight to make chicken broth. p.s. If you decide to do that, take the skin off the chicken so that it's not just chicken spices broth)

1 large white jersey sweet potato (the same ones from the fail fries last week), peeled and diced into small cubes

creamy topping:

-1 cup of Greek yogurt

-garlic powder

-chili powder

-Tabasco Sauce

Directions:

Step 1. Add broth to CP

Step 2. Saute Onion.

Step 3. Add dried black beans to crock pot.

Step 4. Add everything else (Just want to make sure that the beans are covered)

Step 5. Cook for 8 hours or more on high.

So, needless to say, these ingredients, besides the spices, are things that I would normally never ever eat individually, hence the fear in the title.

I'll let you know how it turns out when we eat it....

Soooo..... BLECH. David liked it, actually he liked it quite a bit. I felt like it was too one dimensional in flavor, there was something missing.The one thing that I would say is that the combination of spices was great. It would taste really great if it wasn't seasoning basically a bean soup.

These are the changes I would make:

½ the beans, ½ the liquid, cut the carrots in chunks, add bacon, add 1 extra sweet potato.

It just felt like something was missing. It tasted fine, but I just wish that for the amount of food that I put into the crock put, that it tasted a little better.The creamy spicy topping was great. I'm eating it on tonight's dinner too. I think it could also go on chicken and be baked. It was GREAT.

All in all, the discussion that ensued in discussion after dinner about the dinner, was that bacon makes everything better, including this.