green

Christmas doughnut.

New toy!

Are there any more presents for us?

Ted and I stayed home this Christmas, which means we hosted our traditional Christmas Eve open house. This year the forecast was for cold, wet weather so we thought chili might be a good dish to serve our guests.

Now Ted is typically the chili chef in this household, but because of scheduling he couldn’t prepare it in time for Christmas Eve this year. I’ve never made chili before, and Ted was fuzzy on details, so I went in search of a recipe I could use as a starting point. I found one touting itself as “The Best Vegetarian Chili in the World” — how could I go wrong?

Recipe Source: The Best Vegetarian Chili in the World by calead910

Notes and Substitutions: I diddled with this recipe a fair amount: omitted the celery, but added extra onion and an additional orange bell pepper; added about 3/4 of a habañero pepper for extra kick; pumped up the cumin and added an extra clove of garlic and an extra bay leaf; mis-read the recipe when shopping and bought only one package of veggie ground, so supplemented with a bit of soyrizo (soy based chorizo); even with the smaller amount of ground, it was looking a little lacking on the beans side, so I added and extra can of black beans.

We served this up with some shredded cheddar cheese, chopped red onions, sour cream, and cornbread.

Verdict: I really liked the way this turned out: very hearty, and tasty, and spicy (but not sear-your-lips-off spicy; the other seasonings added complexity and depth to the heat). I think I preferred the accidental ratio of more beans/less veggie ground. Ted is dubious about the garbanzo beans. I think they add good texture and mouth feel, but Ted thinks they don’t look right (although his objection is not strong enough to stop eating it. heh).

It was really simple to prepare and seemed to be a crowd-pleaser to boot. Definitely adding it to my regular menu rotation… yum!

Each December, a small cul de sac in El Segundo transforms into Candy Cane Lane–a neighborhood where all the houses are festively decorated to celebrate winter and Christmas. It’s great to bring a mug of hot cocoa and stroll the street, taking in the lights and music and dropping in to say hello to Santa. Here are a few shots from this year’s visit – enjoy!

Santa and Rudolph hit the links

Tropical Frosties

RAWR!

Chilly flamingoes

Reindeer runway

Trees grow a little different here

Late Jurassic/Early Sinterklaassic fraternization

Screening at Santa’s Theater

Santa in the isolation chamber

Beautiful.

Whoops – they seem to have been BoingBoinged… lower quality version on YouTube here

It’s been getting chilly lately, and a big bowl of steaming udon sounded like the perfect remedy.

Recipe Source: Me just screwing around.

Notes and Substitutions: I didn’t have any of pre-packaged udon with seasoning packets, but I did have a bunch of ingredients that might work well: soy sauce, ginger, shiitake mushrooms, kombu, scallions, spinach, and tofu. I just kind of threw things together in hopes of making something edible.

Verdict: It was… ok, but just so. Adding chili pepper really helped boost things a bit, but the broth was a bit bland. Still, it was hot a filling and the individual ingredients were pretty yummy.

I really need to learn how to make better vegetarian dashi so I can make last-minute osoba now and again without resorting the packaged stuff.

From the folks at Rolling Dog Ranch