verbicide | mmm food

I was raised and have remained extremely carnivorous. Vegetables for me have always been side dishes to enjoy with the meat, which was whole point of the meal. Eggs and even tunafish did not count as meat. Chicken, beef, fish (beyond canned tuna): it had to be a slab of something. Well, that's not entirely true. In fact, slabs of meat weren't that common, it was more or less chunks of something in curry.

But in the ongoing pursuit of fiber and vegetables, I found a recipe in this month's Cooking Light and rather liked the look of it. It is the recipe of one Mark Brody, who claims it his "I just ran 10 miles and need to cook something that's hot, quick and nutritious" vegetarian chili. The recipe also notes that the spiciness of the chili can be reduced by seeding the jalapeno (which I did). This would have gone great with cornbread, but I didn't think to buy any.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion (I used one small onion, slightly larger than a golf ball)
2 garlic gloves, minced
1 1/2 cup zucchini (I used one large, one medium)
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
1 cup chopped green bell pepper (I used yellow here, as I hate green peppers)
4 cups chopped tomatoes (about 1 3/4 lbs) (worked out to be three large tomatoes)
* 1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 (5.5 oz) cans spicy-hot vegetable juice
1 (15oz) can black beans (rinsed and drained)
1 (15oz) can kidney beans (rinsed and drained)
1 jalapeno pepper, minced

I added a 15oz can of corn, because I felt like it
* Also, I didn't bother buying chili powder, deciding instead to make up my own spices. I used: garlic salt, extra black pepper, paprika, ground red chili pepper, ground coriander, ground cumin --all to taste.

Preparation:

Heat oil in pot over medium-high heat, add onion and garlic. Cook 2 minutes or until tender, stirring constantly. Add zucchini and bell peppers, cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add tomatoes and remaining ingredients, stirring well to combine. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Yield: 6 (1 1/3 cup) servings. 200 calories. 3.6 grams of fat, 12 grams of fiber. 10 grams of protein.

Comments:

I really liked this recipe and outside of the changes I've made above, would make it again (I might try it one day with chili powder, because it was time consuming to add pinches of this and that until I liked it). I took the risk of making a large pot of it and have frozen half for another day and am glad I did. I didn't miss the meat at all, because the vegetables were so chunky and the beans really gave it 'meat' so to speak. As for the quick part of this recipe --I'm not the biggest fan of chopping up heaps of vegetables, but since they weren't all to be finely chopped, it didn't really take all that long.