culinary adventures

I just had to rave about the chili I made on Thursday night. I used to completely hate cooking, but since we've moved to Saint Louis, it's started to grow on me a little. It's definitely making me put "dishwasher" on our list of must-haves when we move out of this place. Anyway, I've been reading a recipe site called Epicurious, and made Vegetarian Black Bean Chili with Orange and Cumin. I'm a big fan of orange flavor surprising me in foods, so it was awesome. I'm posting the recipe so that you can try it and love it - because it wasn't hard, and it was yummy. The only change I made was to half the amount of onion, which I felt was a good choice as the onion remained subtle. Subtle onions are always better. p.s. I sold my aforementioned jeans on ebay for more than what I paid for them. I'm afraid that I'm about to turn into the kind of person who sells stuff on ebay for their entire income. And that I'm also going to start being all Martha Stewart posting recipes on here. Get ready!

Vegetarian Chili with Orange and Cumin (from Bon Appetit)

yield: Makes 4 servings (plus leftovers)

active time: 30 minutes

total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 oranges
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 4 garlic cloves, pressed
• 4 teaspoons chili powder
• 4 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 15.5-ounce cans seasoned black beans, drained
• 2 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes in juice
• Hot pepper sauce
• Sour cream or plain yogurt
• Chopped fresh cilantro

Preparation

Grate enough orange peel to measure 1 1/2 teaspoons. Juice oranges. Heat oil in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions; sauté 5 minutes. Mix in garlic and spices. Add beans, tomatoes, and half of orange juice. Simmer over medium heat until heated through and flavors blend, stirring often, about 15 minutes. Mix in orange peel and remaining orange juice. Season to taste with hot sauce, salt, and pepper. Ladle chili into bowls. Top with sour cream and cilantro. Pass extra hot sauce alongside.

a little update

Well hello, faithful blog-readers. I promised myself that I wouldn't update this until I had a real break from wedding editing. FINALLLLLLY.
So I have a little half self-imposed, half hard drive space-imposed break. Amazing how you can fill up a Terabyte hard drive so quickly.
Not too much is new here. Robert started a new semester, we had a real live snowstorm, I'm selling jeans on eBay for at least what I paid for them, hopefully more. I'm also trying to get all these boxes of stuff I've had for years out of the way. I realized that I've moved a lot in the past 8 years. Let's count, shall we? 10 times. And I realized that I really don't want to keep moving 6 shoeboxes and tubs with me each time I move. So I got a couple scrapbooks and got vicious on the memories.
Tomorrow we're going to Nashville to spend time with baby nephew Colton and the rest of the fam - I'm so excited. I got him the cutest toy ever....get excited, Colt.
This is not a very exciting update, but I'll leave you with some very cute pictures of Rufus and Franny (Jason and Megan's dog) playing in the snow. They do look vicious, don't they?