With a nod to the new Star Wars movie in our title this week, we have three dishes to talk about as we steamroll ahead into the holidays. Two are from the Kathy Hester Slow Cooking for Two cookbook—‘ceptin’ for one of the recipes, we doubled and used our big ole Crockpot.
The other is from a site called Oh My Veggies. And here we were thinkin’ that we’d not been that busy in the Kinky Elfery Kitchen this week!
We have had above average temperatures damn near all of December so getting into the soup mentality has been a struggle. That bein’ said, we always like soup so we pretended it was cold and made some anyway. Some for ourowns-elfs and some to share. We DID have promise of cooler/cold weather in the near future, so that just supported our kitchen and soup activity. By the way, that promise of cooler/cold weather came true in the form of THIS on Friday mornin’.
This is our mannequin, Mail Oder Annie, in the wee hours of Friday morning watching it snow! Can’t you see how excited she is?! If you check the Facebook page of anyone you know from Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Louisiana, you will see nothing short of a billion pictures and videos. A December snow in the Deep South hardly ever occurs, so we were snappin’ pictures all day. Now, let’s get on with the cookin’. Our first recipe, which we have prepared before, is the delicious and super EASY Spicy Chickpeas and Grits from Kathy Hester.
It’s her vegan response to Shrimp and Grits, a very popular, though initially thought of as odd, pairing. When we first read this recipe, we didn’t ‘cotton’ on to it but when we looked a bit closer, we thought, “Why not?” Well, it’s fabulous. All you do is gather the ingredients and throw them in your slow cooker/Crockpot, turn it on low and BINGO! about 7 to 8 hours later, you have half of your main dish.
While her recipe includes a slow cooker recipe for the grits, we opted for cooking our grits the old fashioned way…in a pot. And, we used a very special type of grits…Brown Rice Grits. You know, a lot of folks don’t care for grits (bless your hearts) but these are quite lovely. They are grown and milled at Two Brooks Farm in the delta of Mississippi.
These rice grits are non-GMO, pesticide and fungicide free as well as gluten free. The grits most folks are familiar with (or hate) are made from corn or from hominy (corn treated with an alkali). Rice grits from Two Brook Farms comes in both white and brown. We opted for the brown because it’s has the whole grain. Who would have ever thought of Brown Rice Grits!!
The final product is so good! You just plop your grits onto your plate, smother it with the spicy chickpeas and dive in. We also had some slaw and a ‘fish’ filet from Gardein to round our meal out.
I mean, this is so very easy and so very good..it’s worth keeping cans of chickpeas and fire-roasted diced tomatoes and a jar of Cajun spice around. That’s pretty much it. If you are grits aversive (even after you’ve TRIED the rice grits), try it over brown rice.
Cooler weather always has Your Elf thinkin’ about Chili and Potato/Leek soup. Great for a light dinner or for a warm soothing lunch! So, we opted to cook both to have on hand. First off, we found a really good recipe for Potato/Leek soup at a site we’d not found before called Oh My Veggies. We liked the look/sound of this recipe because it had the word “CHEESY” in it AND it was vegan! So, we had to give it a try.
And, it was so worth it with some ‘adjustments’. In fact, since we doubled the recipe, we were able to share with some friends AND have time for a bowl or two for ours-elfs.
We have to admit that Big Solid is not much of a Potato/Leek soup kinda man—all the more for Your Elf! As for our Chili recipe, we finally settled on the Kathy Hester slow cooker recipe titled Wacky Cincinnati Chili.
We had already decided that this recipe would be doubled and possibly tinkered with a bit, so we pulled out the full size Crockpot and commenced to cookin’. One reason we selected this recipe was that it called for Black (Beluga) Lentils which we just happened to have. Black lentils are very small, we’ll share a picture in a minute…but they are very hardy and can stand up to lengthy cooking. So, here you go.
In the top left corner, you’ll see regular ole brown lentils. These are the ones we are most accustomed to cooking, for sure. In the top right corner, you find French or Puy lentils. These are really great too for being able to tolerate a lengthy cooking time without getting mushy. And, of course, the Black lentils are in the middle. You can get an idea of how small they are. No matter what color or type, lentils are a staple of vegan cookery. Here’s how we ‘tinkered’ with Kathy’s recipe. We did not go the full route of using spaghetti, so it really does disqualify it from being Cincinnati chili. Please feel free to follow the recipe to the letter! We also removed some of the cooked chili that was not very spicy to send to a friend who is not a fan of spicy stuff. Then we added a half teaspoon of the EXTRA HOT Red Pepper we got at Patel’s grocery…and when it says EXTRA HOT, it means just that! We started to go for a whole teaspoon; had we done that, we are pretty sure you could have heard some rather strong words or loud screams emanating from our house. Nonetheless, that half-teaspoon was just what it needed to give Big Solid and Your Elf that kinda kick we like! We defrosted some frozen vegan corn-sticks we’d made a while back and had us a fine little meal. We also had some Firewalker Hot Sauce on hand, just in case the heat wasn't enough. Y'all this is the BEST hot sauce EVER; lots of heat and lots of flavor!
Friday, we had the pleasure of having lunch with Sandi Herring, RDN, LD. Sandi is the Dietitian with the Ornish Program for Reversal of Heart Disease at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson MS. We had SO much fun talking how plant-based eating can reverse heart disease and her activities with the Ornish Program that TWO HOURS went by like 5 minutes. We have plans to meet again and see how we can join to promote healthy eating. THANKS SANDI!!
Okey-dokey, friends, we are done for this week’s little bloggery. We always seem to wind up with more to write about than we initially think!
So, again and for always, LOOK for the GOOD, be an EXAMPLE of the GOOD, and ACT for the GOOD as HARD as you can, in as MANY WAYS as you can, EVERY DAY that you can. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to YOU ALL! Your Elf.
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