Black Bean Chicken Chili

A couple of weeks ago I had lots of ingredients and nothing that worked together. I also had chicken that I needed to get cooked. It was one of those nights where the food you have to cook is not the food you planned to cook. Suddenly I was improvising. More then once these have turned out to be some of my best meals, which is why I started keeping a notebook in my kitchen to write things down as I go. I'm hoping to get my new camera figured out soon so I can start putting some pictures of the finished products up with the recipes. Until then you will just have to trust me that this looked great with some shredded cheese on top and a big dollop of sour cream.

This was planned to be something more like an italian soup, and ended up as a nice thick chicken chili. With lentils.

1/2 white onion diced

1 teaspoon garlic diced

1 pound boneless skinless chicken, cubed

1 can dice tomatoes with jalapeno, I used Hunts Petite Diced with Zesty Jalapeno - It's been in my house for months so I'm glad I finally got it used up.

1-2 teaspoons (or more to taste) of Penzy's Chili 3000 - the best chili powder I've ever found

1/2 teaspoon Cayenne

1/2 teaspoon cumin

salt and pepper to taste

1 large can black beans, well rinsed

1 1/2 32 oz box of Beef broth - see note below

4 shakes of red chili pepper flakes - using a standard shaker like the ones you see at pizza places

2/3 cup red lintels

Saute the onion and garlic until they begin to brown, add the chicken and cook till half done. Add tomatoes with juice, and boil for 1 - 2 minutes. Stir in chili powder, cayenne, cumin, salt and pepper and cook for about 1 minute. I add the seasonings before the broth so they have some time to cook, I think it helps develop and blend the flavors. I usually season again towards the end, to get the flavor just right. Add black beans, and 1 box broth and bring to low boil. Simmer until it's beginning to thicken, add the lentils and remaining broth, and cook 30 minutes until lentils are soft.

You could skip the lentils if you have time to let it boil down on it's own, I was getting very hungry and wanted to thicken it up quickly. That being said, I loved the lentils in this, made it a little different from my standard chili, which is a white chicken chili. Also, I used beef broth with chicken because it's what I had and I needed to use it up. Normally I wouldn't mix chicken and beef like that, but I really liked it in this, and I think it went very well with the black beans and the lentils. I might even do it on purpose next time. If someone makes this with chicken broth please let me know what you think.

Things I'm trying now

I've been thinking and thinking for 2 days now, trying to come up with a good post. It's not that I can't think of anything, it's mostly that I think of too many things. Kind of like I talk too much, and tend to write in run on sentences. So I'll go over a couple of goals, things I've been doing recently to help myself save money, products I'm testing out in my constant search for just the right thing.

1. Saving money. I've recently started using a piggy bank, a real honest to god shaped like a pig, piggy bank. I've been trying for a long while to find a good way to save up money for specific goals, and I'm hoping this will finally be it. In the past I've done well with a coin jar, but I'm trying to save more money in a shorter period of time, so I want something I can put cash into w/o seeing it, so I'm putting half my part-time income into the piggy each week, and occasionally dumping coins into him as well. I think there is 60 in him now, but I really have no idea. I like it that way. When I know how much there is it's easier to spend it on something else.

2. Cooking better. We've been doing a lot of shopping at the farmers markets this summer. Not quite as much as I would like, but a good amount. I love it, because we can get everything we want, for much cheaper. It also means I have to cook, because we are getting raw ingredients at the peak of their ripeness so they have to be prepared quickly. Sometimes this means getting creative and making something on Monday that I don't intend to eat until Thursday. For example this roasted sweet corn and pepper salad I made last week. It was quick and easy and lovely.
5 ears sweet corn
2 bell peppers
3-6 assorted peppers, Anaheim, jalapeno, and sweet red
Garlic to taste
Olive oil
shuck the corn and lightly oil, cook on a hot grill till the kernels start to char and rotate so it's cooked evenly, at the same time lightly grill all the peppers, you want a blackened outside but there should still be some crunch in them.
Remove the corn from the cop, chop the peppers (I take out all of the jalapeno seeds because I don't want it too spicy) and mix in garlic and oil to taste.
This is what I like to do when I have too much sweet corn, which seems to happen to a lot of us in MN this time of year. The Man east it, I eat it, and it's easy to freeze if needed.

3. Conserve money in regards to my beauty routine. This one is breaking my heart. I spent a year plus being under employed, and only working my part-time job. And since getting a real job again it feels like my hair and skin have suffered the price. Not only am I no longer working for a company (don't want to use the name) that makes amazing natural skin and hair care products, but I can't seem to afford to get the other brands I've been wanting to try either. Earlier this week I was at Target and saw that they have Bumble and Bumble Seaweed shampoo and conditioner in their buy 1 get 1 packages. I just couldn't justify $40 for shampoo and conditioner, even though I tried, oh trust me I tried. I've been growing my hair out for almost a year, doesn't that deserve some type of pampering? It's almost to my shoulders, I need to start caring for it better right? Well, fortunately or not I have been blessed with strong thick hair and no, I don't really need to spend $40 on shampoo right now.

So this will be what my blog will hopefully be focusing on in the next month. I will continue with the goal of at least 1 post a week, which I was successful with in August. Now I will have something to grow those posts about. When I write about a product review, it is likely it will be something cheaper, or at least purchased on sale. When I'm writing about cooking I will hopefully be writing about easy and healthy meals and recipes I am developing. And I will be constantly searching for ways to save money and have fun on the cheap.

Happy Friday!

I hate crockpots.

In which I explain my deep loathing for what I consider to be the laziest and possibly one of the best inventions since… something other then sliced bread.

Crock pots, slow cookers, whatever you want to call them, are suppose to be gods gift to the busy spouse/parent/PTO president/girl scout troop leader next door. I’m sure that some people find them to be exactly that. But I simply don’t understand how. I’ve managed to make 1 successful meal in them in my life, and that took 14 hours. I could have easily made the same thing in a real pan on the stove in 4. I will very happily admit that I have a background in food service, and spent 5 years working in various kitchens around my lovely town. So yes maybe I am a little biased, and a little stubborn about my cooking methods. I don’t like being limited to 2 heat settings, low and high. What can you possibly cook with 2 heat settings?! I digress. My lovely boyfriend, who for the purpose of this blog will be called The Man, asked me to make chili this week. I was more then happy to oblige, as I love my chili recipe, and I haven’t made it in quite a while. I also figured it would give me a chance to make it in the crock pot, because it’s hot outside and that would mean less leaning over a hot stove. And I will master this #$%&ing crock pot cooking thing if it kills me.

So I started. I knew it would be different, because I wouldn’t be able to caramelize the onions and the garlic, and I wouldn’t be able to brown the meat. That’s ok, I decided to let the meat stew with the garlic and peppers and onions till it was cooked. So I let it stew… and stew… and stew… two hours later I gave up and added the broth, figuring maybe it would start to boil, and that would finally cook the meat. It sorta worked, no boiling but FINALLY the meat was cooked. Which was good because my kitchen-spidey “ew you shouldn’t be eating that” senses were starting to kick in. The rest of the ingredients went in and I went to watch some TV. The timer was set, 30 minutes for a stir, on my stove 30 minutes wouldn’t have done too much, but it would have been slightly thickened and the onions would be completely transparent. In the crock pot nothing had changed. The onions were still crunchy (they’ve been cooking for well over an hour by now) and there wasn’t a hint of thickening. Two hours later and it was still the same story, not a hint, seriously, NOT EVEN A HINT of thickening! It should have been done by then! I should have been scooping bowls full of thick chunky chili that looked more like a nice thick curry full of chicken and bean and lots of other delicious things into Tupperware for lunch for me and the wonderful man this week. I knew I had to leave it on overnight, so I added more broth, just in case it ran dry and burned down my house, and turned it on low.

This morning I woke up to a house that smelled of chili and made my tummy happy. I immediately had lovely thoughts of my lunch today. So I went upstairs to check on it and it looked lovely. Till I stirred it. It’s still a big brothy bowl spicy chicken soup.

Crock pot 1 – Girl 0

The End.