Kitchen Success/Kitchen Disaster {In the same week}
I've said that this is not a cooking blog. Now I know it will never be. In the span of one week, I had a kitchen success and a kitchen disaster. What makes the disaster worse is that it was in my grandma's kitchen. During the Niner game on Sunday. I guess I was really involved in watching the game and not the oven. More on that later!
The Kitchen Success:
In keeping with my Resolutions in Motion, I made chili two Sunday's ago. What makes this a true success is that it's 100% grain free. That means that I made something that I could eat, and somthing the hubby liked as well. Usually when I cook for me it's bland and borning. Not this chili. It was perfect for the wintery weather we were having. The hubbs topped his with cheese and chips. I ate mine as it, but in the future will try it over a baked potato. This chili is also gluten free, so if you are looking for something that doesn't require a packaged spice mix, this is your lucky day!
I'm going to type the recipe in it's entirety here, but then I will tell you what I did or didn't do. Like I didn't cut any onions. I haven't got over that fear just yet. Also I didn't let this chili simmer for the designated 2 hours. One, ain't nobody got time for that, and two, I failed to read the recipe all the way through. We were hungry. I'll explain later.
Vickie's Kick-It-Right Chili
Family Circle Magazine 2009
2 TBL olive oil
1 lb ground beef
1 onion peeled and chopped
1 green pepper finely chopped
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 can (15.5oz) red kidney beans drained and rinsed
1 can (15.5 oz) black beans drained and rinsed
1 can (14.5oz) stewed tomatoes
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup honey
1 TBL chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp hot sauce
In a large Dutch oven, heath the oil over medium high heat. Add the ground beef and break it up with a spoon. Cook for 5 minutes or until browned. Add the onion, green pepper and garlic cook for an additional 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are soft. Add the beans, tomatoes, 1 cup water, the tomato paste, honey, chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt and hot sauce. Simmer, covered, for 2 hours on medium low heat. Stir occasionally. Serve with your favorite chili toppings.
It was totally easy. I used ground turkey instead of ground beef. I made it even easier by omitting the chopped green pepper and chopped onion and garlic. Instead I used dried spices like minced garlic and minced onion by McCormick. I also omitted the hot sauce all together since I'm not big on hot sauce, and I took the chili powder down to one TEASPOON. Finally I traded black beans for pintos, because I prefer pintos. I promise it was totally easy, so easy in fact that I'm going to do it all over again this weekend.
Now for my recipe disaster:
The Cheddar Bacon Pull Apart. It's lovely and fatty and perfect for football watching. Since the 49ers were in the playoffs and we are and always have been die hard 49er fans, this was perfect. It was easy to put together, easy as slicing bread. So I put it together with plans to cook it at my grandma's house. Cook it being the key words here. What I did do was BURN the bread and almost BURN her house down. Embarrassed? Absolutely. To say I burned it, it putting it lightly. I torched it. The top was black, like charred. The funny thing is, when the charred part was scrapped off, my family ate every last bite of this bread. Moral of the story: Don't broil a fatty, cheesy bread bowl, while watching your team in a playoff game. I'm planning on making this for Super Bowl. This time ahead of kick off so I don't burn the house down.
This is the 2nd recipe for Resolutions in Motion.
For more info visit Megan's blog.
