Rainy day dinner, Recipe Rainy day dinner

Posted the 14/11/2008 01:44:15 By Couch Cubicle (Visit website)

It is a gross day in New York, and someone forgot their umbrella this morning. By the time I got to my apartment from the subway on my way home from work, I couldn’t see because the rain running down my face was clouding my contacts. Lovely. I always test the limits with umbrellas and I always regret it.

But, on the plus side, gross day = chili! I love chili. Chris, however, does not. I basically have been trying to bribe him for three weeks to eat chili, and I finally won the battle when he was too hungover to argue on Sunday. I’m thinking about slipping him a little something something so we can have real gravy on Thanksgiving. We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, here’s my bubbly pot of chili:

The recipe, which I kind of made up as I went along because you can do that with chili:

1/2 red onion
3 cloves garlic
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1/2 a beer (I used Coors Light because there was a bottle in our fridge. Classy.)
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes with juice
2 cans kidney beans, drained
1 can black beans, drained
1 can corn, drained
1 can vegetarian spicy refried black beans
chili powder, cayenne pepper, cumin, salt, pepper, paprika

So yeah. Basically I used a lot of cans. It’s quite complicated, really: You saute the onion and bell peppers in some cooking spray, then add the garlic for about a minute, then the beer. Once the beer cooks for a few minutes, start dumping in the cans, reserving the refried beans for last. Stir those in slowly until they are incorporated and the mixture starts to thicken, then add spices to taste.

My bowl:

No cheese, sadly.

And we all know you can’t have chili without corn bread:

That’s Chris’s too. Although I picked at the rest of the loaf enough to basically equal another piece, so whatever.

I don’t really like to put the effort into baking things that don’t taste like chocolate, so I always use this corn bread mix by Trader Joe’s:

This time I had to use soy milk, of course, and then I also went out on a limb and replaced the 1/2 cup of oil it called for with 1/2 cup of apple sauce. It turned out exactly the same, I think. I haven’t had it in about a year, so it’s hard to compare to the full-fat version, but it tasted like corn bread, and that’s all that really matters.

Tagged: chili, corn bread