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.

healthy harvest muffins

 

 So, it's already been established that I suffer from stupid-huge cookie syndrome. I also have chronic stupid-huge muffin disorder. Whenever I bake muffins, I fill the muffin cups improperly and end up with maximum 11 instead of 12 muffins. I think I just remember things (food items, specifically?) as being bigger than they actually are. Case in point, when I was circling the grocery store scouting for muffin ingredients, I saw regular muffin liners and balked at their small size. Instead, I bought those labeled géant, convinced that they were the correct size for my muffin tin, even though the medium size was coloured in pink, yellow and blue, which I remembered from the last time I bought muffin liners. Of course, the géant liners were in fact géant and rose above the cups of my muffin tin.

And I ended up with 10 muffins. 10 moist, beautiful muffins, warm with spices and bursting with nutritiousness. When you pull these muffins apart, they're flecked with the bright orange and green of the carrot and zucchini - it adds a bit of visual interest and texture to your standard brown muffin. The bittersweet cranberries top off these muffins perfectly.

pasta primavera with parmesan and white wine sauce

Guess what made me crave pasta primavera. It would put most people off pasta primavera for a little while... but not me, I guess. I was watching that episode of Seinfeld where Russel Dalrymple, an NBC executive with whom Jerry is trying to start a pilot, orders pasta primavera at a restaurant. Elaine sneezes on it and he ends up getting violently ill.

So of course, I thought to myself.... that's what I want for dinner! Isn't it totally absurd how my stomach and my brain works?

vegetable enchiladas

 

I love enchiladas, especially vegetarian ones. Don't get me wrong. Meat enchiladas are great too, but there's something about vegetable enchiladas that just makes me sing. Literally. All day. I'm sure it's annoying.

For one, meat enchiladas can be very heavy and they leave you with both food baby and food coma, neither of which are good. Secondly, I find the vegetables to be more flavourful. Thirdly, well.. they're just healthier. For all of these reasons I was craving vegetarian enchiladas late last night. Early this morning I was at the grocery store loading up on peppers, zucchini, onions, jalapenos, eggplants...