crab & corn chowder

Well, hello there. Did you forget who I am? I wouldn't blame you if you did. I took a bit of a hiatus in the past few weeks. I blame parental visits, trips to New York City and final projects due. It's been busy and I've missed cooking and baking! However, some exciting news - while I was away, I was given a Leibster award! This is an awesome award given to the smaller blogs. I'm looking forward to posting more about the award and recognising other bloggers. Thank you so much to Tobias at T and Tea Cake!

Back to my lack of posting, I made up for it today - I made crab & corn chowder, pickled jalapeno cornbread and rhubarb pie. I guess you could say I was on fire? At the very least, I was bitten by the cooking bug (and pressed to do a self-portrait for one of my classes, which, believe it or not, necessitated the baking of pie) and I have a few recipes ready to go for those who are interested in the creative musings of squirrel brains.

vegetarian corn chili

 

Up until today, I'd never made a vegetarian chili. I was inspired to make it by my friend Suzanne who served it at her dinner party over the weekend, leaving a crowd of non-vegetarians totally satisfied. I love vegetarian food (to some extent - tempeh and mungbeans freak me out) and I've learned to appreciate vegetables in starring roles rather than supporting roles. I love the variety of different flavours and textures you get when making vegetables the main focus of a meal. I also find that when I'm eating too much meat, I notice. I love meat in small quantities, but I begin to feel the cumulative effect of too much meat; I begin to feel really heavy and gross. I don't have the strongest digestive system out there, and I find that I feel a lot better when I have less meat in my diet, while still maintaining a proper nutritional balance.

So if you're feeling a little meat heavy, throw together this chili. It's chock full of vegetables and you can use up all those old relics you have languishing in your fridge. Feel free to swap vegetables in or out to your liking. You can also use kidney beans instead of pinto if that floats your boat. I've had a can of pinto beans in my cupboard for a few months that just wasn't getting eaten, so I used those. They were a little softer than kidney and they broke down a little bit. This softness helped to maintain a balance of textures when paired with the chunky vegetables.

chicken nachos with cilantro corn salsa and guacamole

Alright, I know you can't really write a recipe for nachos.  That's not my intention here. Nobody measures anything when they make nachos, they grate and dump with abandon (and as they should). There's nothing even particularly special about these nachos, except for the fact that they are damn tasty. And anyone who has ever been to a bar or a pub knows that nachos being tasty is not a given.

I just wanted to share these nachos with you because someone shared them with me, sort of. I remember the evening well. Leigh Anne and I were obsessed with LOST, and sometimes I went over to her apartment to watch the weekly episodes which, at that time, were still nail-bitingly and mind-bendingly good. These nachos happened on one of the most intense LOST evenings to date, culminating in Kate and Sawyer finally (finally!) getting it on in the polar bear cage. I don't remember exactly what she put on them (nachos are pretty flexible - one of their excellent qualities), but I do remember that there was chicken involved and from that point on, chicken nachos became a staple at my social gatherings. Especially the LOST parties. <-- dork