This Week's Adventures

I started out this week determined to cook up a storm, and by golly I think I did. It was also a good workout for my culinary flexibility, as one dish was from a recipe, and the other straight from my head. I'll start with the dish I made on Wednesday.

The recipe is called Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard, but when I went to the grocery store they were apparently all out of canned black beans, so I wound up substituting with one can of kidney beans and a can of small Mexican red beans. I'd still like to try this recipe again with black beans, as I find they have an entirely unique taste as compared to their beany cousins.

Other than that substitution, I pretty much followed the recipe, though I believe I put in a little more squash then asked for, because I just can't get enough of that butternutty goodness. Mmm.

Here's a shot of the chili mid-cooking process...


Please forgive me for the badly lit photos - I'm still working out a better lighting system so my food shots don't turn out quite so yellow

You can see that I chose to leave the squash in relatively big chunks, and thankfully this didn't backfire on me - the pieces cooked all the way through and were perfectly tender.



Post-chard addition. I realize it looks like a witches' stew, but trust me, it tastes delicious. I'm actually carting the bulk of it up to my cottage to share with my parents this weekend, just to prove to them that I can actually cook.