Veggie Chili

I am super happy today.  Isn't that a great way to start out?  But truly, I am so happy! I have gotten back a bunch of my grades for class and I'm doing really well, we finished our final project, and I was elected as DTS President last night! I could not be more excited about all of these things.  Now I am in the home stretch and can relax and have fun! 

There are a lot of exciting things coming up in my life.  One is an Ugly Sweater Celebration with a Secret Santa Exchange.  Can that get much more exciting?  Also, the 1st ever Harry Potter Study Day Marathon is coming up and I am equally as excited for that.  Finally, one of my good friends is graduating and her graduation dinner/party is this weekend.  And after that: I go home for WINTER BREAK! AH! 

This Winter Break is only the most anticipated break of my entire life.  I am going to door country with my family and then AUSTRIA with Brian and his mom.  I have never been out of the country and I am super pumped.  Any advice on traveling/going to Austria? Please let me know because I am a total newbie at this!

I wanted to share some of this good news with all of you and so I found a good recipe to share as well.  My boyfriends brother-in-law is a chef and he made us the best chili ever! This is the recipe for it.  Note: it is spicy and I used less hot peppers.  Also note: when working with hot peppers...wear gloves!!! I did not and I spent almost an hour trying ever remedy possible to stop my hand from burning.  It was awful.  Needless to say, I still loved the chili; that's how good it is!

Vegetarian chili – yields about 6 quarts

Ingredients:

3 Tbs vegetable oil

2 onions, diced
1 each green, red, yellow bell peppers, diced
2 fresno chiles, minced
1 anaheim chile, diced 
10 cloves garlic, minced
1 ancho chile, rehydrated (just put it in some simmering water for 15min) and minced (I didn't use this)
2 28-oz cans diced tomatoes (with their juices)
5 cups water/vegetable stock
¼ cup chili powder
2 Tbs cumin seed, toasted and ground (or you can buy already ground if you like)
½ tsp ground cayenne pepper
1 16-oz can black beans
1 16-oz can garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas)
1 cup (or more if needed) yellow cornmeal (you can use rice instead, but that takes 20 minutes to fully cook)
Salt, to taste (start with 2 Tbs and go from there)

Directions:

1.   In a large stockpot, heat the oil, then add the onion and bell peppers.  Sweat (like a sauté, but you don’t want to color the vegetables) on medium heat until soft and translucen 

2.   Add the fresno and Anaheim chiles, continue cooking about 1 minute 

3.   Add the garlic, continue cooking another minute 

4.   Add the tomatoes, water, chili powder, cumin, and cayenne, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally

5.   Add the beans, bring the mixture back up to a simmer 

6.   In a SLOW stream, add the cornmeal while stirring the chili constantly.  You don’t want the cornmeal to clump up, so go slow and only add about ½ of the cornmeal at first.  Let the chili simmer and see how thick it is with just ½ the cornmeal and keep adding more until it gets as thick as you want it to be.  The cornmeal will take about 3 minutes to thicken, so wait that long between additions.

      7.   Season with salt, and serve.  

Photo from Recipes Wiki