Category: hiding vegetables

Crowd Pleasing Chili

If you are having a crowd over for a big game or just hanging out with friends and family around the holidays and need a big satisfying meal, chili is always a great option. It is a blank canvas and does not require a lot of hands on work. It is also very easy to make gluten free, vegetarian or allergy friendly, which is great when you have a large crowd and don’t know what everyone’s food allergies or preferences are. I don’t think I have ever really made chili the same way twice, but I made this one recently to fuel up some friends before we enjoyed a long walk.

Quinoa Pumpkin Chili for a Crowd

Ingredients

1 to 2 pounds of your favorite beans or mixture of beans

½ of a large onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1-24 ounce can crushed tomatoes

About ½ a 15 ounce can of pumpkin

1 ½ teaspoons salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

2 Tablespoons of chili powder

¼ teaspoon dried oregano

3 Tablespoons of cider vinegar

¾ cup of chicken stock (or vegetable or beef stock)

1 ½ Tablespoons brown sugar

½ cup of quinoa

Optional, add 1 to 2 cups of leftover roasted vegetables and/or turkey, chicken or beef

Directions

Pour all the ingredients into your slow cooker and stir. Cook on high for 2-3 hours or low 6-8 hours. Taste and add more seasoning if needed. Serve with sour cream and sliced green onions.

This is yet another way to disguise Thanksgiving leftovers. To stretch the meal even further, you can serve it over mac-n-cheese, as I did for lunch the day after I made it.

quinoa-chili-for-a-crowd

When you are entertaining for the holidays, having easy meals that can stretch to feed a crowd are very useful. This is a healthy meal and a hearty meal that will give you the fuel to warm you up after hiking, skiing or keep you going during overtime of your favorite team’s game.

What are your favorite crowd pleasing meals? Stay tuned for an extra post this week with some gluten free holiday entertaining ideas and a recipe!

Here are some past crowd pleasing or tailgating recipes and ideas for using leftovers (Always the same disclaimer that they are from before our family started eating gluten free so make adaptations as needed or ask me how I do it! mammascooking@gmail.com

Fall Football and Tailgating

Lessons Learned from Thanksgiving and Cooking in the Aftermath

Pre and Post Thanksgiving Ideas with a Potluck Recipe thrown in

Happy Thanksgiving

Taco Tuesday – Step outside the Taco Shell (Gluten free!)

Getting Ready for the Holidays

Turkey time, a visit to a butcher shop and italian sausage mac-n-cheese (I think I’ll make this mac-n-cheese GF tonight!)

Thank you to Mamapedia for highlighting Mamma’s Cooking 3 Easy 10 Minute Meals on Mamapedia Voices on Friday!

My new finds…

Hi all. Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. It’s been a crazy month. As I’m sure many of you understand, time is not always on our side. Even during this crazy busy time, I still have managed to cook for my family most nights. Although, we still order out or have eaten out of course once or twice a week 🙂

Especially with the economy the way it is right now, it is on all of our minds, how can I be more frugal? I have started meal planning for the week. This is something I never thought I would do. I used to be the one who went to the grocery store and bought what looked good and what was on sale regardless of what I had a home. Now I have taken stock of what I have in my pantry and freezer and decide on a menu for 5 nights, then I go shopping.

I also used a gift card my husband’s grandparents gave me for Christmas at Macy’s and spent one wondeful afternoon off in the kitchen section of Macy’s. I came across the Jessica Seinfeld cookbook, Deliciously Deceptive. It is amazing! Now, I have to admit I have a daughter who loves her vegetables, but mommy doesn’t always like to eat them 🙂 The recipes that I’ve tried so far have been big hits. One is tortilla cigars – mix cream cheese (I used the low fat neufchatel cream cheese), with some shredded cheese, carrot purree and sweet potato purree and whatever you have leftover, like chicken or pork. I also added some black beans. Roll in a wheat or multigrain tortilla and bake for 5-10 min. Soooo good! I cut them in half and Karina ate it all! She loves it.

Seinfeld’s cookbook just gave me alot of ideas. I also used a modified version of one of her recipes and made mashed potatoes but just added a cup of purreed cauliflower. Again, sooooo good! Another good tip is to add some purreed vegetables (I’ve been buying canned pumpkin) and adding that to soups. I made a chicken and brown rice soup the other day and just added a 1/4 cup of canned pumpkin to the broth. It adds flavor and nutrients, sooo good! Karina loved it!

The other new discovery I’ve made is barley risotto. Oh my. It was sooo good! I have become the person who makes risotto in my rice cooker because its easier, but I saw a recipe somewhere for using barley instead of aborrio rice and wanted to try it out by hand. I added some parmesan, sage and canned pumpkin. It used alot more liquid than aborrio rice, about twice the amount actually. Next time I’ll try the barley risotto in my rice cooker, but I don’t know if its big enough for all the liquid.

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