Beans must be soaked over night before cooking.
Last weekend I whipped up two pots of chili. One vegetarian and one made with really good grass fed organic ground beef. There are zillions of chili recipes out there. I like to go cruising on Food 52 for inspiration. That’s where I found a recipe for Just Good Chili which included fun ingredients like beer, coffee and some cocoa.
Vegetarian Chili
I was headed out to a community garden pot luck that night, so I made one pot of the chili with no meat. Easy enough to adjust the recipe, I simply omitted the beef and added a few more veggies that were in my fridge. Chili is easy to play around with.
I froze a container or two, and still had chili left to spare. Someone at the potluck brought a pinto bean cornbread casserole. Almost like a shepherd’s pie but with beans and cornbread instead of meat and potatoes. That gave me an idea for my leftovers!
Chili and Cornbread Casserole
Since hubby and I are playing the “no bread” game this month, cornbread could be made easily without wheat. So the next night, I played around with this concept. I put the remaining chili into a casserole dish and put cornbread batter on top. I even added some frozen corn to the cornbread batter for extra corny-ness! Into the oven it went.
It worked great! Try it!
