My Own Vegetarian Chili Recipe!

I have been craving chili lately, even though the days here are pretty warm and I used to only cook chili on chilly days when we lived in the Midwest. Since I'm vegetarian and picky about my chili, I make my own - always, no exception. When I made this version in Illinois for the first time, I actually remembered to write down what I added to the chili! I made this tonight and it tastes even better than I remembered.

Please excuse the awful quality of the pictures. My cell phone doesn't take the best of pictures!

Beth's Vegetarian Chili

• 2 large cans or bottles tomato juice
• 2 packets chili seasoning mix
• 2 onions, diced
• 1 zucchini, diced
• 1 squash, diced
• 1 green pepper, diceds
• 2 cans chili beans
• 1 can fire roasted tomatoes
• 2 cans diced tomatoes
• 2 cans dark kidney beans, drained and rinsed, but reserve about 1/2 can to thicken chili, if needed
• 3 cans light kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can great northern beans, drained and rinsed
• splash of cooking wine
• about 1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke
• dash of instant coffee granules
• seasonings, to taste: onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder, freshly ground pepper, paprika, cumin, salt

• 1/2 cup dried TVP (textured vegetable protein)
• about 1/2 cup boiling water for TVP
• 1/2 teaspoon Better Than Bouillon vegetable base

The best way to make chili? Throw everything into the pot, taste-test often, and season away! Literal instructions could go something like this.

Pour one bottle of tomato juice into a large pot and mix in seasoning packet. Add cans of tomatoes and drained and rinsed beans. Cook on medium heat. Dice all vegetables and stir in. Add a dash of whatever is in the cabinets, or what I enjoy adding in: cooking wine or whatever is on hand, liquid smoke and coffee granules. I like my chili to have a lot of oomph, so I am very liberal with my use of seasoning. I add, taste, simmer, taste, add and repeat as necessary. While the chili is simmering, you get to have fun with TVP!

TVP is interesting, because it is textured soy protein. It has a protein content that nearly matches meat, and it also has a "meat-like" consistency when rehydrated, reminiscent of ground beef. I tend to stay away from "faux meat", because I have been vegetarian long enough that meat texture grosses me out. Luckily, TVP is a great addition to chili! It thickens it up, and gives it a new layer of awesomeness, and the texture doesn't bother me, but it seems to soothe my meat-eating husband, because like I said, it's reminiscent of ground beef.

To hydrate TVP, follow the instructions listed on the package. I measure out 1/2 cup of TVP and then use a glass measuring cup, and boill a little less than 1/2 cup of water in the microwave. Once boiling, take it out and add the 1/2 teaspoon Better than Bouillon vegetable base. I usually throw in some of the seasonings in with the vegetable base, to give the TVP a boost. Stir until mixed and microwave until it boils again. Once boiling, take it out of the microwave, and stir in TVP. Once mixed together well, set it aside for 10 minutes so it can hydrate itself. Easiest way? Pop it in the microwave and hit the timer for 10 minutes. Easy peasy!

Simmer until the veggies are tender enough to your preference, then serve. I like to top my chili with shredded cheese and crackers on the side, but my husband has been known to put bread & butter pickles and sour cream in his. It's all about preference! Enjoy!

This is my own recipe, and probably the only one I've ever written down while cooking. This is mostly created because of what I wanted to put in the chili, and also what I happened to have in the pantry. Hope if you make it, you like it.

Note: This recipe makes a lot of chili. I use two pots, a large and a medium. If you have an extra large pot, I am envious! If you are like me, and you have to use two, I try to put more spices and veggies in the large pot than the smaller one, and once it's just about finished simmering, I'll use a large glass measuring cup and take a few cups from each pot and put it in the other, just for consistency.
 

This picture does not do the chili justice! It's much better in person! Yellow from the squash, green from the zucchini and green pepper, red from the kidney beans. Much more interesting than the picture shows!

This makes a large amount of chili. The green pot is the largest one I own, and the other one is smaller, but it works. One of these days, I am going to have to invest in an extra large pot! Please excuse the mess! I am a messy cook, but that's okay, because I make up for it by having fun while listening to good tunes and dancing around the kitchen as I'm creating culinary deliciousness.

Peanut sauce so good, you won't even notice that it's vegan!

Recipe time! I keep meaning to blog more, but life sometimes gets in the way.

I made peanut sauce tonight to put on steamed veggies and whole wheat pasta, yum! It's delicious AND vegan, or vegetarian, depending upon which ingredients you choose.This recipe is delicious, and my husband loves it, and he is quite the meat-eater.

I received a request for the recipe, so two birds one stone, right? A blog post and a typed recipe! So here it goes.

Peanut Sauce (via Skinny Bitch)

• 3 tablespoons peanut butter
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 2 tablespoons Bragg's Liquid Aminos, soy sauce or tamari
• 1 tablespoon agave nectar or honey
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated

Mix everything together and put on noodle dishes, leafy greens, or anything. Penne pasta + lots of mixed steamed veggies = delicious!

To spice it up, add ground red pepper and a splash of lime juice.

This recipe is delicious, but runny, so if you like thick peanut sauce, you may want to add cornstarch or another thickening agent.

Sidenote: This is not my recipe. Credit goes to "Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Delicious Cookbook" by Kim Barnouin.

The best part of an adventure is enjoying the journey

Adventure time!

What's been happening in my world:

• My husband, Jason, flew to California in August. He stayed with a friend (thanks Ray!) on his couch and worked from the California branch of his company while he looked for a job in the 3d industry.
• We were apart for two months, but he flew back for a few days so he could be a groomsman in a wedding.
• He landed what can only be described as his dream job. Yay for employment in 3d!
• We were apart for almost two more months until he flew back for our first road trip across the country!
• We have two dogs, Bailey and Suzie. Bailey loves car rides and he is just as happy as can be riding in the backseat. Suzie, however, gets violently car sick, so we had medicine from the vet which we administered every five hours, like clockwork.
• We drove from Illinois to California, so we went through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Unfortunately, we drove through some of the states at night, so I only have pictures of part of our journey.
• Jason had a cold during our trip. If you know my husband, you know he's a talker. A road trip is a great opportunity for conversations and it also helps pass the time. Guess who barely had a voice? It hurt his throat to speak, so we mostly listened to music.
• As we started nearing Los Angeles, we ran into rush hour plus Thanksgiving Day traffic. I was terrified, and instead of one hand on the "'Oh $#!+' handle", I was actually clutching both hands on it at one point, in attempts to stave sheer panic. Jason did a great job driving, but the speed and the number of cars weaving in and out of lanes was quite overwhelming.
• We arrived in Long Beach on Thanksgiving. Trying to get ANY sort of food on Thanksgiving was darn near impossible! Thankfully, a single Domino's was open, so we had cheese and mushroom pizza as our Thanksgiving feast.
• While driving, I was compiling a list of possible homes for us, because right now, I can officially say that we are homeless. What I've learned from our adventure so far? Trying to find nice, affordable housing is easier than finding a needle in a haystack... but not by much. We did find a few houses within our price range, and had two tours yesterday. We really liked the last house we saw, and filled out an application.
• Having minimal credit has proved to be a hindrance for us. The house we like is within the realm of possibility, but it will cost a lot of money up front. I think we can pull it off, but the upcoming weeks are going to be extremely tight. This means that all of our belongings, which are in a storage unit in Illinois, won't be delivered to us for awhile. All we have with us are the clothes on our backs, some extras in our suitcases, the dogs, the dog kennels, and a sweater that I've been knitting.
• Speaking of clothes, I used the hotel's washer and dryer this evening. We had about four days worth of dirty clothes, so I hauled everything to the hotel's laundry room. Thanks to my mom, I had some dryer sheets and a few of the laundry detergent pods, which is great, because they didn't have any supplies to buy. There were two washers and two dryers. Dryer 1 ended up not working, and all of our clothes were still wet and cold. Dryer 2 worked fine, so I put the still wet clothes in for a tumble. Jason and I switched off, so he sat with the clothes while I came back to our room. He comes back almost an hour later with only part of our clothes. The rest were at the front desk, where he had been talking to the hotel employees. Apparently, the clothes had been burned in the dryer. Every piece of clothing has little scorch marks and a quick sniff proved that the spots were actually burns. The manager will not be back until Monday, so we're not sure what's going to happen. This would not be that big of a deal, except we only have a small amount of clothing to wear until our belongings get here (in a month, maybe two?) and Jason starts his new job on Monday.

I am excited about all of changes and adventures we've been having, but some have been better than others. I really hope we get the house we want. I'll take some burned clothes if we are able to get that house!

I plan on uploading some pictures within the next few days. Oh, what a journey this has been!

Settling into good (or at least better!) habits

Ah, it's that time of week again... my beloved Monday. Monday is a wonderful day in the Pethtel household. It consists of one or more of the following: How I Met Your Mother, Castle, Buffalo Chicken sandwiches (formerly calzones) or pizza. Since starting the vegan challenge, we have not had calzones or pizza (mostly because each have gobs of cheese and the calzones were making me obese). I am slowly mastering the art of creating a vegan Buffalo Chick'n panini.

I finally made an acceptable vegan version of ranch dressing. I can't have my delicious buffalo sauce without it being paired with ranch. While I understand that this is not really the healthiest obsession to have, it could be worse! I could be trying to make mock Big Macs (*shudder*). I'm reading Fast Food Nation, hence the shudder. :)

The vegan ranch recipe can be found HERE, though I did throw in a splash of regular soy milk, some dried dill, and some onion powder. This time I DID use the blender, and it came out quite nicely! I'm sure if you were to put it up next to bottled ranch dressing, it probably wouldn't be as good... but you know what? I made it myself from scratch, it's devoid of animal products, and I can put whatever sort of herbs I'd like! So that makes it a winner in my book. :) I noticed from the last (failed) batch, that it's much better after sitting in the fridge for awhile. I had it with baby carrots earlier today, and it was amazing. I can't wait to try the ranch on the paninis tonight!

Vegan Ranch!

And why, yes that is an old Prairie Farms sherbet container. I am very much my grandmother's granddaughter. She was raised during the Great Depression, so she never really throws anything out that could easily be reused. My family kids her about holding onto plastic containers that are supposed to be thrown away and recycled. She's the matriarch of our family, not to mention the best cook by far (sorry family members!). She would make so much food for Sunday lunches or holidays that there were always leftovers, and what made better to-go containers than old plastic food containers? She never really worried about getting the containers back, though if you amassed a collection of her Cool Whip bowls, you'd be politely reminded of it the next time you took home leftovers. Anyway, my grandmother is brilliant in more ways than one, but this is one of her good habits that I picked up... though I would say her love of reading is much more important, and I luckily inherited that as well. :)

On a side note: last night we had quick and easy Indian food. I put the packaging in with the recycling which was collected early this morning, so I can't remember exactly what it was or who made it. Epic fail on my part, but the food itself was really good. Pretty sure it was Channa Masala? All you had to do was make rice and then slit the package open and nuke it in the microwave for 2 minutes, and boom, dinner is served. Completely necessary on days when I just don't feel like cooking!

Also, we are no longer traveling for Easter, so I can go ahead and complete the vegan challenge as I initially intended. I started on April 7th, so I'm going to go until May 7th. I'm not going to lie - it's been kind of a pain to cook without any sort of dairy, but the substitutions if I can get them (or make them) are pretty awesome.

One week down!

Woo hoo! Today officially marks one whole week since I stopped eating meat and put myself on a vegan challenge. I've also been trying to exercise more. I've heard that if I keep with it, I'll eventually come to like it. Good, because I HATE EXERCISING! Actually, I had a fantastic treadmill experience yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I thought my legs were going to fall off, but I feel awesome today so, there are definite pros to working out.

A quick rundown of what I've cooked this week:
(Oh, by the way? Another thing you should know about me? I freaking love lists.)

Monday - My "cheat day". Mondays are always hectic in my house. Jason doesn't get home until nearly 9, so cooking (if we cook at all) has to be quick and easy. I made a grilled buffalo 'chicken' panini this Monday. It consisted of quickly heating up 'chicken' strips (a vegan version) in a skillet, adding a little vegan 'cheese', Frank's Red Hot, some of the mock ranch dressing I made, on (vegan) wheat bread and pressing it on the George Foreman grill. This actually turned out to be quite tasty!! The 'ranch' was off somehow. I found a few vegan recipes for ranch on the internet and I tried making it. Not bad. Not great. I think what really turned me off was the texture. I was only making a small amount in case it sucked, so I didn't want to drag the blender out. I used a hand blender, and I think that was my mistake.

Ah, a typical Monday meal! Eaten on the floor while watching Castle. I forgot to get a picture of the completed meal, so by the time I remembered, I'd already polished off 1/4 of it. :)

Tuesday - Lentil Pasta and Roasted Green Beans. YUM and YUM! The Lentil Pasta recipe can be found HERE and the Roasted Green Beans recipe HERE. I think next time I make the lentil recipe, I'm going to slightly increase the amount of garlic and decrease the amount of cinnamon. I made the lentils with whole wheat pasta. This dish was tasty, but different than I'm used to. Variety is wonderful!

Lentil Pasta and Green Beans. The green beans look burned, but that's mostly because I added paprika to the recipe. Also, the food doesn't really look all that appetizing, but I'm not a good photographer, and also - this was taken with my phone, haha! :)

So I'm almost halfway through the vegan challenge. Wow! I know I'm eating so much healthier than I was before, exercising more, and I feel great. I'm quite happy and I was telling my husband, "I feel more like myself than I have in a very long time." 2011 has just been quite the healthy year for me!

Broadening my culinary horizons

Well, it is day 5 of the vegan challenge, and it is still going great. I'm not missing meat at all, and I don't feel deprived or hungry, either. One obstacle I've encountered is that I kind of have to relearn how to cook and find recipes. I can't just pull any cookbook off the shelf and choose a recipe, because I need to be vigilant that there are no animal products in what I cook. Finding vegan recipes is not that difficult, but finding vegan recipes that don't require a trip to the grocery store is. I am slowly stocking a vegan/vegetarian kitchen, but money is a concern in our home, so I can't just run out and get every ingredient. If I don't have all but one or two items, then I am not cooking that dish.

I had a wonderful weekend that was chock-full of healthy happenings. We took the dogs on a 2+ mile walk on Saturday which, needless to say, they loved. We also finally made our way to an international grocery store fairly near our house. I've been meaning to stop in there for ages, and wow - I really like that place! It doesn't look that big from outside, but their use of space is excellent and we wound our way around the aisles for at least a half an hour. I found a package of an Indian paste for rice and Jason bought a package of seasonings so he could make tandoori chicken.

 

 I added a potato, green beans, carrots, and half of an onion. I would definitely 

add a LOT more veggies next time, especially more potato. I also didn't have
lemon curd (oops), so I just put lemon juice in it. Oh well. Yum!

HOLY COW, I am not used to eating Indian food! The spices built up until my mouth was melting, but it was so delicious! Jason seemed to enjoy his tandoori chicken, and we both loved the zucchini that Jason grilled. We had enough food to have generous helpings and still plenty of leftovers.

I've not really been an Indian food fan in the past, but this was SO good!

Sunday was pretty much a lazy day. Jason spent an hour or so getting my bicycle in working order again. My poor bike has just sat in the elements for who knows how long. There are a few things about me that you should know: I hate exercising, and I have not really ridden a bike since I was a kid. That said, today my bicycle works, but I don't. I only went around a few blocks, but prior to my bike being back in good shape, it was stuck in high gear. I'm kind of embarrassed to say that my knee is somewhat stiff now. I'm determined to stick with it, though. Gas prices are ridiculously high and our income is still the same, not to mention the amount of weight I gained last year (for no good reason) and this year (since I quit smoking).

I also tried my first (intentionally) vegan convenience food today. It's from Simply Asia and the kind I tried was Sesame Teriyaki. I intentionally chose the mild kind, because after two days of Indian food, I needed to give my digestive system a break. :) Anyway, I thought the noodle bowl was pretty good. The amount of sodium was ridiculous, though. All in all, not too shabby.

Tasty but sodium-laden. Despite this, it's handy on lazy days!

Vegan Challenge!

I'm on day 2 of my 17 day vegan challenge! So far, it's been great! Today I have a lot more energy than I typically do. This is a big deal for me, because Spring is a bad time for me. I'm plagued by allergies, so my energy level is quite low this time of year.

I had to do some shopping to try and stock up our pantry. Luckily, we have a fairly good supply of canned and frozen veggies. I added some more grains and other vegetarian staples. I realize that I am going to be shopping differently from now on. We typically grocery shop every two weeks or so, but it's going to have to be bumped up to at least once a week, because I am flying through fresh fruits and vegetables and loving it!

 

Our shelf never looked so classy... or so appetizing!

I cooked my first intentionally vegan dish last night. It turned out quite tasty! Jason said he liked it, which is huge! If my meat-lover husband said he liked the meal that was devoid of any animal products, then I know the meal was a success. Jason coined the meal "Fala-hitas" because he said it reminded him of a mix between fajitas and falafels. I sauteed bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and corn with a little olive oil and fajita spices. For the wraps, we put a little plain hummus on whole wheat tortillas and topped each with black beans. I typically put sour cream on top of my fajitas, but seeing as I'm eating vegan, it wasn't an option. Hummus was a last minute call and if it didn't taste good with the fajitas, well, then lesson learned. As it turned out, we both really enjoyed it, but there has to be a good balance; a little hummus goes a long way.

 

"Fala-hitas"!! They were amazing and I am really looking forward to supper tonight for leftovers.

I'm loving the vegan challenge so far. I realize I'll probably get frustrated at one point or another, but I am going to keep with it.