Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Going Meatless...

If you haven't heard about Meatless Monday you're missing out.  This is an effort to reduce meat consumption by 15% in order to improve your health, and the health of the planet.  I'm a vegetarian... mostly.  I occasionally eat fish and on a really rare occasion when I'm feeling otherwise "stuck" I'll eat chicken.  I'd say I'm about 90% vegetarian.  The decision was something I thought about for a long time... and then I read the book Skinny Bitch, which completely ruined the meat-eating experience for me.  The book was not what I expected at all (I thought it was just some cutesy motivator to lose weight... WRONG!).  Anyway, there is one passage in the book that I credit with completely changing my eating habits... if you want to know, just read it.

So, for the first Meatless Monday of the new year, I decided to try a new recipe for Butternut Squash Chickpea Chili.  It was actually pretty good, although I did need to tweak the recipe a bit based on what I had on hand.  For starters, no butternut squash.  However, I did have a couple of sweet potatoes that were approaching the "do I throw these out?" phase so I figured I'd use them up.  I also didn't have any chipotle peppers, but I did have some jalapenos and used those instead.  I also substituted the margarine with olive oil.  I truly love olive oil and it's good for you.  I use it liberally.  Finally, I would recommend a bit more milk than the recipe called for or the chili will be WAY too thick.  I think I used about 1 1/2 cups.

The real test of a recipe is whether or not my carnivorous husband will eat it.  I'm happy to say, he did... and I've got enough leftovers for today's lunch.

No comments:

Post a Comment