Is it Fall, Yet?!

Good Monday evening, Kitschies.  I hope you made it through another Monday relatively unscathed.  It was a weird day at work.  We're pretty much running back at full-staff now, which is nice, but the pace was rather slow, for a change.  Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be able to not be so rushed, but there's a difference between steadily busy and bored out of my mind.  Today was very much the latter.  And tomorrow doesn't look any better.  *sigh*  I just can't win for losing.

Before I get too far in to the post, I just wanted to say welcome to all my newest followers.  I am just astounded at the amount of followers I have now!!  I never thought I'd get 10, let alone 130!  I hope you enjoy my blog as much as I enjoy putting it together.  Please know I appreciate each and every one of you and if I don't respond to a comment, I'm not ignoring you, it's just that work is where I do a lot of my blogging and it's been super busy lately.  But, I promise you, I will get to responding to all your comments eventually.  And if you have any suggestions or questions, please...let me hear them!!

Anyway, last week when I made this week's dinner menu, I was hoping against all hope that it would be cooler so I could start making some more "comfort"-type food.  Well, over the weekend it was dang near 90* and today was 87*.  Not exactly my idea of Fall.  Either way, I made this great chili, that I found in my Biggest Book of 30-Minute Meals, for Saturday's dinner.

White & Green Chili
1 lb unseasoned meat loaf mix (1/3 lb each ground beef, pork and veal), lean ground beef, or ground pork
1 small onion, chopped
2 15-oz cans Great Northern beans or white beans, rinsed and drained
1 16-oz jar green salsa (aka: salsa verde)
1 14-oz can chicken broth
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
2 Tbsp snipped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup dairy sour cream (optional)

In a 4-quart Dutch oven combine meat loaf mix or ground meat and onion.  Cook over medium heat about 5 minutes or until meat is brown and onion is tender, breaking up pieces of meat with a spoon.  Drain off fat.  Stir in beans, salsa, chicken broth, and cumin into meat mixture in Dutch oven.  Bring to boiling; reduce heat.  Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

To serve, stir in 1 Tbsp of the cilantro.  Divide among 4 serving bowls.  Sprinkle with remaining 1 Tbsp cilantro.  If desired, top individual servings with sour cream.

NOTES:  I used a big fry pan because I don't have a Dutch oven (well, I have one, but it hides out under the covers in the bed).  I don't like cilantro, so I skipped that step completely.  And I also omitted the sour cream.  Both those things should pretty much be illegal in my book.  Even without those two ingredients, I liked this one!

I didn't have *quite* enough cumin to make 1 1/2 tsp, so I threw in a pinch or two of homemade taco seasoning (that has a lot of cumin in it).

I'm used to white chili meaning chicken, so next time I think I'll try this recipe with chicken instead of beef.  Both Neil and Mason really liked this.  It took a while to convince Nate that he'd like it, but once he finally decided to try it, he ate it all without complaining.  I *think* the hubs liked it, but he didn't get home until after 10:30 that night and I didn't wait up to see if he liked it or not.  I can tell you that there was none of it left in the fridge the next day, so that's a good sign.

I think that about does it for me tonight.  Nate is a little under the weather today and I'm on a shortened sleeping schedule thanks to him waking me up at 2:30 this morning because he had a fever.  It took me an hour to go back to sleep only to wake up again at 5.  Boooo!!  I'm hoping to get to bed a little earlier tonight and I also hope he doesn't get up in the middle of the night.  Poor little guy. :(

Coming up this week: A couple manis and a recipe for chocolate chew cookies and homemade chicken fingers/nuggets.  Speaking of manis, did you see the poll on the upper right of my page?  Be sure to vote (because I can't be bothered to make a decision as simple as "which color should I wear first?" LOL)!  Oh, and speaking of manis, again...has anybody hear from Polish Hoarder Disorder?  I severely miss her weekly challenges. 

Good night, my dear readers.  See you all tomorrow!