Chili!! with or without meat!

so on tuesdays Dipak doesnt eat meat.. its a religious thing, and i respect it. it also gets me off my red meat obsession once a week lol which couldnt hurt. so while dipak was slaving away at school, i was schlepping on the couch trying to think of a vegetarian meal that would fill us both up AND (not to be too immature but) wouldnt make me gag :|

my friend Natasha said that the one healthy meal her bf likes is this turkey chili she makes. her bf and i have the same unhealthy taste in food. so it got me thinking.. i could do veggie chili and make corn bread that would un-health-ify it so id like it more too :)

ive never made chili so i was stressing it wouldnt turn out good, so i got two lean cuisines just in case hah. but it turned out great!! and i know it'd turn out even better with real meat. (i got fake ground beef for the meal- i prefer Morning Star brand for my fake-meat products btw) - oh! and i almost had a bean-catastrophe! so i had a packet of dry red beans already in my pantry so i thought ill try and use it in the recipe. the back of the packet of beans said "soak in hot water for 2 minutes" - i thought omg how easy! ive been avoiding this for no reason! ... yeah. i was wrong. i ended up soaking the beans in boiling water for like... over an hour! maybe even 2 hours! it was nuts! after two minutes, the beans were as hard as peanuts! and they looked so gross.. i ended up texting my friend and my neighbor asking how im supposed to do this.. basically you just wait. lol so it IS easy, but it just takes forever. BUT dipak was stuck in lab for just long enough, so its all good hah

okay so for meatless chili i used these ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil 
1/2 an onion (minced) 
1 tbsp garlic (minced) 
1/2 of a green bell pepper
1/2 of a red bell pepper 
1/4 cup of vegetable broth or stock (i have learned now that stock is more saturated than broth, so it tastes more flavorful but also has more calories.. just fyi lol)
about 2 cups or 16oz of crushed tomatoes (they come in these huge cans that are like 32 ounces, but i only used about half of it for this recipe- but you can also eye-ball it. the tomato sauce will be the base of your chili. so add as much as you want to make yknow? itll make more sense when youre doing it)
1 packet of McCormicks Original Chili spices (im pretty sure thats cheating, but ive never made this before and it was on kinda short notice lol)
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp chili powder
about 1/4 cup of red beans (okay iiim pretty sure you can also just buy a can of pinto beans or kidney beans in a can, drain them and dump them in your chili and let them sit in the pot bc the ones in the can are already smushy bc theyve been soaking for months.... ew. i just grossed myself out hahaha... i mean theyre fine to use. so im assuming you can do that too! drain them, and use however much you want. im not the biggest bean fan in general, so i tend to use less) 
1 packet of Morning Star crumbled meat (which also sounds gross lol so if you want to use real meat, i dont blame you haha but it was pretty good! its NOT meat! so even tho it looks like it, dont expect a meat taste or texture. but its not gross.. and it doesnt take away from the flavor. so really its just a little more substance in the chili to make it more hearty)

IF YOURE COOKING DRY BEANS: begin your whole journey by soaking your beans in hot water! put a pot on the stove, turn the heat to high and dump in your beans. once the water starts boiling, turn it down to med/low and let them sit there forever! check on them in an hour and see how firm they still are. im PRETTY sure mine soaked for over an hour and a half! if you want to use canned beans, ill just write that into the recipe below :)

TO ACTUALLY CREATE THE CHILI: start with the first ingredients. heat on medium. oil in your pot, throw in your onions. sprinkle a little salt on your onions. i saw on a cooking show that salting the onions while theyre cooking makes them more flavorful, and dipak loooves his onions. so i figure, why not! then add your garlic and peppers. let them simmer together and get smelly and delicious! (that takes about 5 minutes in my opinion lol.. make sure to stir frequently so they dont burn) Then throw in your vegetable stock. turn the heat to medium/low and let this all sit for about 5 minutes.

then pour in the whole packet of chili spice. i was wondering what makes chili that color... this combination of spices does. mystery solved. so pour in your spice and mix mix mix. once its all dissolved into your veggie broth concoction, add your crushed tomato sauce. stir that all around and then turn the heat to low and let it sit there. add all of your spices to this; garlic powder, salt, garlic salt, cayenne... let it simmer.

if youre using canned beans, i think you should drain and add them now. if not, wait until your beans are smushy enough and then add them whenever theyre ready.

IF YOU USE REAL MEAT: i think what i'll do next time is take a packet of ground beef, chicken or turkey.. throw it in a skillet with a little oil on the bottom. hit it with garlic salt, pepper, cayenne and maybe a sprinkle of your chili spice packet (optional) and let it brown up while you break it apart. then when its fully cooked, throw it in the chili you just made and let it all simmer together for a while. 

when you have all your chili pieces in one pot.. let it all simmer together for 10 minutes on super low. after i was completely done with my chili, i had to turn off the heat and wait for dipak to get home, so i had to re-heat it, but it was AWESOME anyway :) and i grated cheese on top and made corn bread (which is like my 4th or 5th recipe on here) and it was soo gooood!

let me know how it goes :) and what you added to make it better! i need more tips!

Adventures in QUINOA :)

i know i havent written in a long time but honestly whos reading this anyway lol.. recently dipak has been on a super health kick!! first things first, if you know me personally or have ever read my blog you should know that "healthy food" is generally NOT on my menu... or even near my menu really :/ anyway, im trying to cope. so i have discovered quinoa! and. im in love! :) it tastes like a mix between rice and pasta! and you make it about the same way too!

we've also bought cottage cheese, egg whites, hummus, boost (the old people drinks w extra protein), and a bunch of other things i would never eat. :/ altho i did start having the chocolate boost and.... its pretty good. maybe bc my mom used to feed my sister and me those old people drinks when we were little bc we were underweight hah... guess im nostalgic lol

so anyway, ive started using quinoa which is pronounced "keen-wah", not kwin-oh-ah like i thought. lol i learned that from an episode of White Collar. i learn a lot from TV. like gas is odorless!- friends. you can make a car bullet proof with phone books- burn notice. fig newtons werent named after issac newton- big bang theory. julius caesar invented a salad- how i met your mother lol some facts are less useful/true than others haha..

okay so today im going to give you the quinoa cake recipe with a lemon aioli! which btw is my new favorite dinner :) its so freakin goooood!

the ingredients youll need:

2 cups cooked Quinoa (i thought they meant cook 2 cups.. they really mean, cook about 3/4 of a cup. when its cooked it more than doubles in size! so i ended up with about 5 cups of quinoa the first time lol)
1 cup of grated fontina cheese (however when i was in london visiting my sis-in-law, i couldnt find fontina. i used chedder and it was awesome anyway.. so basically a cup of your favorite shredded cheese)
3 tbsp of flour (i used wheat flour in london and white flour in america haha and both were great)
2 green onions (finely chop)
1 egg (lightly beaten - and to get extra food-glue, ive been adding a splash of egg white only)
2 tbsp black pepper
salt to taste (i generally do like 1 level tbsp)

so start off making your quinoa! i noticed that some packets tell you how to make it, and others dont, so in case you dont know how to make it... heres how: pour one cup of quinoa in a pot, and add two cups of water to it. set the burner to high and when it starts to boil, turn it to medium and let it soak up the water and get puffier. generally from beginning to end it takes me about 15 minutes to make one cup of quinoa. and when you cook ONE cup, it makes about 2.5 cups of cooked quinoa. so itll be perfect for the rest of your recipe :)

now that you have your cooked quinoa, put it in a bowl and add your other ingredients right on top. i then put on gloves but if youre not insane like me, just stick your hand in there and squish it all around until its all mixed together and looks like... maybe like a cross between ground meat and latkes before you fry them lol

there is no finesse to this portion of the cooking btw. just dump and mix :) - and the best thing about this recipe is that you can make this part like in the afternoon and then fry each one up when people are waiting for dinner bc its pretty quick :)

whist that is sitting around soaking up flavor, you can make your lemon aioli! i have learned that i loooooove aioli. actually i already kinda knew that lol but i didnt think iii could make it AND love it too! but it was pretty impossible to eff up so yeah lol ..

youll need:

1/2 cup light mayo (i made it with full fat mayo too and obviously it was better, but the light mayo is actually pretty flavorful too... in fact its almost the same)
1 tbsp garlic (i have also learned that you can always add as much garlic as you want and youll never ruin the food :))
1 lemon (a little zest if you have the little zester, and the juice)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (it wont make it spicy.. must be something about the mayo that sucks up the spice or something)
1/4 tsp chili powder
salt and pepper to taste

for the ailoi, you just dump all of these into your blender and puree your heart out! then i put it into a little bowl and let it chill for about an hour while i cleaned up and made the quinoa cakes.

when youre ready to pan fry your quinoa cakes, take a skillet that might fit three small patties in it and put the heat on med/high. add about 2 tbsp of oilve oil and let it heat up. then (with my gloves!) take a little handful of your goopy quinoa concoction and roll it into a ball in your hand and then squish it down into a patty and place it into the oil. if you think you can toss it into the oil without burning yourself, youd be wrong :|

let the patties sit in the little bit of oil for a couple minutes on each side. dont let it get too too crispy tho. i thought at first that the crispier it is, the better, but its just not true. the flavor is so good, youll want to actually taste the quinoa and not just burnt cheese lol which is also yummy hah

i take a paper towel and when i move the cakes off the pan, i put them on a paper towel to catch any excess oil. i re-oil the pan every other time pretty much..

theyre awesome!! and not bad for you :) AND pretty filling! so make them and enjoy :) let me know how it goes!

this was my first batch btw.. so i had burnt them a little :/ they were still delicious