Chili Time!!

Happy Tuesday! I’m feeling much better today – not quite so ‘large and yucky’ like yesterday J

Okay, last night I made Vegan Chili for the first time and SHOO it’s amazing!! I am obsessed with Chili, especially this time of year! It reminds me of football season and fall leaves… growing up, we were always super busy during the fall with football season (we were all active be it playing/coaching/cheerleading, etc) and chili was always a go-to dinner! Naturally, with the season change at hand, I immediately wanted a giant bowl of chili! Emeril Lagasse to the rescue – I found a great veggie chili recipe, which I will gladly share below J

The gym this morning went great! I was actually feeling really crappy when I woke up and considered skipping (shame on me!) but I pulled my head out of my ass and went anyway. And I’m glad I did! Today is running day so again, here’s what I did:

Tuesday
Situps     50
Run 1 mile
Situps     50
TIME:	13:40

You may not recall but my time for this workout last Thursday was 14:30 – that’s a 50 second difference! I busted a little more ass on my mile and tried to speed up my crunch reps a bit. Again, at the end of the mile I felt as if I could have kept going… which means that I’ll be able to go faster next time! This is fun for me. J I’m excited to try again Thursday and see how I do!

Food Today:

Breakfast:

1 piece low-fat vegan pumpkin bread

Snack:

Oatmeal w/ raisins and cinnamon

Lunch:

Leftover chili & rice

Snack:

Grapes or Banana

Dinner:

Portobello ‘burger’ and roasted sweet potatoes & squash

Okay – RECIPE TIME! I swear, I’m so excited about this.. it will probably just taste like another chili to everyone else, but my only concern with adapting to this new way of eating (meat/dairy free) has been having to sacrifice the foods that I love… so it’s definitely a big score to be able to replace chili without a hitch!

Vegan Chili – adapted from Emeril Lagasse via www.foodnetwork.com

2tbs EVOO

1 ½ c chopped Red Onion (I had to put on giant sunglasses for chopping my onions, I was dying!)

1c chopped red bell pepper (about 1 medium/lg pepper)

2 heaping tbs minced garlic

1 can diced green chiles

1 sm/med zucchini, ends trimmed and small diced

2c thawed corn kernels

1 ½ lbs Portobello mushrooms (I used one container of baby bellas), stemmed cleaned and chopped

2tbs Chili Powder

1 tbs Cumin

Fine Sea Salt

¼ tsp Cayenne Pepper (if you’re not familiar w/ cayenne, start with less – you can always add more)

4 lg tomatoes, chopped

2 cans organic black beans, drained and rinsed

2 8oz cans no-salt-added tomato sauce

1 c low-sodium veggie stock

Chopped cilantro, garnish

Cooked Brown rice, for serving

Toffuti ‘sour cream’ (or regular low-fat sour cream if not following veganism), garnish

Diced Green onion, garnish

-In large pot, heat the oil over med-high heat. Add onions, bell peppers, garlic and green chiles and cook, stirring about 5 minutes.

-Add zucchini, corn and mushrooms, cook, stirring about 10-15 min until veggies have all softened and some liquid evaporated

-Add chili powder, cumin, cayenne and cook, stirring about 3 min.

-Add tomatoes and stir well

-Add beans, tomato sauce and veggie stock, stir well and bring to a boil.

-Reduce heat to low simmer, stirring occasionally for 20-30 minutes

-Serve over a scoop of cooked brown rice and garnish with a dollop of toffuti/sour cream and sprinkling of cilantro and green onion.

-DELISH!!!

I’m so excited to have leftovers so I can eat the next couple of days lol. BTW – I cooked an entire bag of brown rice on Sunday and let it cool then put it in the fridge in containers. It has been awesome to always have it on hand! I am an incredibly terrible rice-cooker but somehow when I was cooking a GIANT pot of rice, I managed to do it right J so I have great rice at all times that just needs a quick heating! I’m a big fan of pre-cooking and prepping as much as possible!

So over the weekend I watched the documentary called ‘Food Matters’. It’s absolutely wonderful. It’s main focus is nutritional therapy vs. modern medicine/pharmaceuticals etc. It was incredibly informative and eye-opening and re-motivated me to eat only organic food whenever possible! I had kind of been slacking off on the organic foods for financial reasons, but a man by the name of David Wolfe (superfood/raw food/natural beauty expert) put it into great perspective; he said that we as Americans have our priorities all wrong… rather than investing the money on good food and health, we would rather spend our money on material things (having a nice house/car/clothes, etc). We need to change that and invest money in the foods that we buy so that we are eating the healthiest/freshest/BEST foods available! It made a lot of sense when I thought about it… why wouldn’t we want to invest in our own health and only put things in our body that are deserving of us and only aiding to our well-being? Duh. SO – back to organic-land, I go! Anyway, I’m not going to go on any more about this documentary but I do recommend watching it if you have the chance/want to! (It’s available on Netflix instant stream J)

Well, I suppose that’s all I have for the day! I hope everyone is having a happy and healthy Tuesday J

Until tomorrow….