Fervent Foodie

Hope you guys got some quality football viewing in this Sunday!  The Browns were VICTORIOUS as was my first ever attempt at making chili!

Any time I’m trying out a new dish, I like to find a fairly basic recipe to help guide me through the process.  After some googling, I decided to go with this recipe for “easy chili” because it had a high rating and because any recipe that has “easy” in the title gets extra brownie points in my book.  And I think we all know how I feel about brownies by now.

Even with this “easy” recipe in hand, there were a couple of obstacles I needed to overcome:  I happen to LOATHE kidney beans and the BF happens to LOATHE red meat.  Yet, we both claim to LOVE chili.  ???  I’m not sure how that works exactly, but it reminds me of being a picky eater as a kid and refusing to try guacamole just because it was green.  Kermit said it best.  It ain’t easy being green.

Anyway, this morning I played the role of over-accommodating mother and tweaked the chili recipe to eliminate BOTH red meat and red beans.

Here’s what I came up with:

• 10 ounces 99% lean ground turkey
• 3 Hot Italian Chicken Sausages, casings removed (Harris Teeter brand)
• 1/2 cup chopped green pepper
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 1 diced jalapeno pepper (seeded)
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 29 ounce can petite diced tomatoes
• 1 15 ounce can tomato sauce
• 2 16 ounce cans black beans (rinsed and drained)
• salt and pepper to taste

First up, I sautéed the turkey, chicken sausage, green pepper, onion, and garlic until the meat was cooked through, then threw everything into a hot crockpot and mixed in the seasonings until it all jived together:

Then I oh-so carefully diced up the jalapeno.

Oh, in case you were wondering, YES, those are rubber gloves I’m wearing.  There was a time when I chopped jalapenos with my bare hands, but that all changed after an unfortunate accident I had last summer involving me scratching my nose after slicing up a jalapeno.…

Alriiighhhhtttt… Perhaps I was picking my nose…

Whatever the case may be, it resulted in my inner nostril being subjected to 15 minutes of firey hell.

Absolute kitchen horror.

So now I chop jalapenos with gloves, which means I’m free to pick my nose whenever my heart desires 

Once the jalapenos were chopped, I tossed them into the crock along with the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and beans and let everything simmer away for a few hours.

Jarrod decided we needed to add ALL THE FIXIN’s, so we topped our chili with some crushed Fritos, raw onion (NECESSITY), and a bit o’ cheese.

Jarrod actually took these pics!  It was pretty funny to see him hovering over his bowl with the camera doing that funny shuffle food bloggers tend to do when they are trying to find a strategic and interesting angle on their dish.  For those who aren’t familiar, it usually involves digging you elbow into your rib cage for added camera stability and sticking your butt out as you slowly squat down until you reach the optimal distance from your plate.

Just me?!

I also made some jalapeno corn bread.  This wasn’t anything extraordinary – just the recipe on the back of the cornmeal container plus a few slices of jalapeno on top.

Not too shabby! 

Stats on 1/6th of chili recipe (no fixings): 284 calories, 37g carbs, 3g fat, 30g protein, 10g fiber