Vegetarian Chilli with Black Beans & Hominy

Tags

black beans, C, Christmas Eve party, cooking with cocoa, family traditions, food blogging, green tomatoes, hominy, pozole, Texas chilli, veggie chilli

“Hominy beans ya want?” “Hominy math problems ya got left ta do?”  “Hominy” has been one of our favorite words around here since I made the Chicken and Green Tomato Pozole.  I needed a large can of hominy to finish the stew since pozole traditionally contains hominy,  so my husband stopped on his way home from work for me one day to pick some up.  He was very helpful and brought home two large cans since I hadn’t specified the amount I needed.  So there sat another can.  When I decided to make a large pot of vegetarian chilli I knew the hominy would be just the thing to bulk it up and keep everyone from missing the meat.

I make “real” chilli for Christmas Eve dinner with stuffed mushrooms and Red Velvet Cake along with other goodies.  This was the menu I grew up enjoying for our family Christmas Eve get together.  It’s not Christmas to me without those key dishes.  The problem is that chilli any other time of year tastes like Christmas.  I rarely make it.  When I first married and moved away from home, however, I  made a lot of vegetarian chilli.  It was always lacking in flavor and texture.  Our Texan friends were horrified to learn that we frequently enjoyed meatless chilli.  They insisted that chilli should be made with Grade A prime steak and nothing else.  I didn’t disclose the fact that when I did make it with meat I used ground beef.  I didn’t figure they could use a second shock.

This was definitely the best pot of vegetarian chilli I have ever made.  There’s something about blogging and “showing your work” that drives you to put extra care and attention into everything you cook.  Some things flop and never make it off the drawing board, others are so close to what I imagined that I try again if it wasn’t “perfect” the first time, others effortlessly come together and are beautiful in the end.  My favorite part of blogging is that now I have a record of everything I make that’s of any importance to refer to when I want to make the dish again.  We are ending up with some family favorites for that reason and my kids love to go to the blog to find their favorite blog foods so I can make them.  Cinnabiscuits and Black Gold Fudge are what they usually ask for, but seriously, those dishes are heart attacks waiting to happen so they can’t be recreated very often.  I used to worry a lot that if I was blogging, my food had to be fabulous.  When my son told me the other day that when he grows up he wants to cook from my blog and that he is glad he will have all of our recipes written down, I realized the plus side to all of my hard work.  I am elated when readers comment and praise my recipes; delirious when someone says they used one of my ideas.  I think, “Really?!!”  But that is nothing compared to the idea of my children wanting to cook from their mom’s recipes in their own homes.  I love traditions and starting them is something that makes parenting even more fun.  And, heaven forbid, I don’t have the opportunity to live to a ripe old age, my kids will still have a bit of me in my blogging.

Ingredients:

3 cloves of garlic, minced

3 c. yellow onions, large dice

1 1/2 c. leeks, sliced

2 c. celery sliced

2 1/2 c. roasted corn, cut from the cob

1/2 c. red bell pepper, medium dice

1 c. yellow bell pepper, medium dice

1 c. green bell pepper, medium dice

3 T extra virgin olive oil

4 c. tomato puree

3 c. water

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. black pepper

2 T chilli powder

1 T cumin

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1 T dark cocoa

2 jalapeno peppers, seeds and ribs removed and minced

32 oz. hominy, canned

4 cups cooked black beans

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Heat the oil in the bottom of a large stock pot.  Saute the garlic until translucent.  Add the onions, leeks, celery, peppers, and corn.

Saute until tender.  Add the tomato puree and water.

Bring to a simmer.  Add 2 tsp. salt, pepper, chilli powder, cumin, cinnamon, cocoa, and jalapeno peppers.

 

Cook on a low simmer for 3 to 5 hours.  The longer the better for the flavors to meld.

Add the black beans and hominy.  Season with salt and pepper to taste. Heat through and serve.

Note: This is pretty mild chilli.

 

 

 

P-nut Butter and Jelly Cookies

Tags

blogging, food blogging, grape jelly, peanut butter, peanut butter and jelly cookies, photography

My son has really enjoyed my food blogging.  He loves to create and take pictures so he likes watching me pull things together in our kitchen, document the methods and ingredients, and carefully take photos of the steps  I take along the way.  It has become such a part of our lives that he vies for the plate which contains the carefully arranged finished product for a recipe that I’ve just finished for the blog or I’ll ask who wants the “blog plate” or I’ll announce that one of them gets the “blog one” tonight.  I’ve also had everyone ask on several occasions if I had taken a picture yet, before we all started eating.  I am very grateful for my family’s support.  Sometimes dinner takes much longer than it should with my obsessing over flavor adjustments and especially when I’m struggling to get just the right photos.  I’m still a novice at picture taking so it’s been a learning experience.  Every once in a while I say, “I’m cooking without my camera tonight!” and it’s a signal to myself and to them that anything goes.  It’s liberating, but I still have to stop myself from grabbing the camera which lives in the kitchen now.

When my boys want to cook something I ask if they want to blog it or just make it, and when I’m blogging a recipe sometimes they ask if they can help.  Most of the time I let them, especially when I need an extra hand because one of mine is taking a picture at a critical moment when something could scorch.  My youngest son is so excited about the whole thing that he sat brainstorming with me one afternoon this summer on recipe ideas.  His face lit up, and barely able to get the words out, in an excited voice he suggested that we take my peanut butter cookie recipe and make them like jam thumbprint cookies, which I taught him to make this past Christmas, and put grape jelly in the centers to make…P-nut Butter and Jelly Cookies.  I love light bulb moments.  I was so proud.  What a GREAT idea!!

On a day that his friends were coming over, he asked if he could make them, so while the others played we did.  The finished cookies literally disappeared so quickly off the tray he had placed in the center of the table after lunch that he only ended up snatching a couple for himself.  He was pleased, however, that everyone liked them.  When we were cleaning up later, he wanted to look on the internet to see if anyone else had been clever enough to think up the idea.  The poor little guy!!  There are peanut butter & grape jelly recipes ALL OVER the web.  I felt so bad for him but let him know that it showed what a very good idea it had been and told him he was a natural little cook.

If anyone tries the recipe and likes them, please let me know in the comment section so I can tell my son.  Thanks! 🙂

Ingredients:

1 c. of creamy peanut butter.

1 c. sugar

1 eggs

1/4 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking powder

Grape jelly

Method:

Heat the oven the 350 degrees.

Mix together all of the ingredients but the jelly.  Scoop the dough by rounded teaspoons and shape into balls.

Place the balls onto a cookie sheet or baking stone, 2″ apart.

With your thumb, press an indentation into the dough.

Fill with jelly.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Immediately remove and cool on baking racks.

Makes approximately 2 dozen.