Monday, September 20, 2010

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!

10 comments:

Unknown said...

LMFAO @ the dutch oven joke

Bethany-Ashley N. Crespin said...

OMG... i hate Sour Cream and Cilantro too!!!

Stray Stitches (Linda G) said...

Recipe looks good. Hope little Nate is feeling better soon.

shortmama said...

I would take 90 right now because it was 111 yesterday and 107 today!

Libby's Pink Vanity said...

I miss some of these SW foods. That's the only thing I miss about New Mexico!

SilhouetteScreams said...

I'll eat anything with beans in it. Trufax :D

I hope your little kidling gets better soon :(

sara said...

Thanks for the follow...right back at ya!

Recalcitrant Nails said...

Recipe looks nummy. And I did vote, lol. And nope, don't know what's going on with PHD. I do know that FabNailArts is having a challenge that she tagged on facebook. You can always go to her page or go to my photo page to see her challenge (where she tagged me).

Unknown said...

This looks so yummy! I think I'll try it with chicken... and with the cilantro and sour cream because I love them both. :)

Jessi M (Lacquered, Painted, Polished) said...

I love your blog, you're such an inspiration! I made this tonight AND I bought the cookbook on Amazon (I bought it used for $0.01 plus $3.99 shipping, haha.) For my chili instead of putting two cans of beans I put one and one can of hominy. It came out great!