a very yummy vegetarian chili

In the very stressful times of food safety scares in China (especially with many types of meats), I've tried extra hard to steer away from consuming them. To convince my boyfriend to follow my path on the other hand- has been a little more difficult. If you are like me in that you want to explore options of eating vegetarian without just eating salad after salad everyday (and to get those around you to join) here is a good recipe to try!

Ingredients:

• 1 red pepper
• 1 green pepper
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup of kidney beans, dried (canned if you must)
• 3 tomatos
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 red onion
• 1 zucchini
• 1 cup of barley
• 2 carrots
• a few large stalks of celery
• 1 can of diced tomatoes with its juice
• 1 tsp of paprika
• 1 tsp of curry powder
• 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper
• 1 heaping tsp of chili pepper
• a few splashes of worcestershire sauce
• olive oil
• 2 ears of fresh corn
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 cans of vegetable stock

Directions:

Soak kidney beans and barley for 30 minutes. Drain. Put in the rice cooker for about an hour, respectively.

Barley is shown above. Do the same with the kidney beans in another bowl.

No pressure cooker? No problem!

Dice all the vegetables, and use knife to shave corn kernels off the cob. 

Sauté garlic, onions, and peppers on a pan with olive oil in medium heat for about 10 minutes.

Pour the rest of the ingredients (the spices, sauces, veggies, beans, etc.) into a large pot, and combine the sautéd vegetables. Simmer for 2 hours and you should have a concoction that looks like this!

Wait 'til Albert finds out how many veggies were used to make this super delicious dish!

Garnish with chopped cilantro, a dollop of fat-free greek yogurt (in place of sour cream) and shredded cheese if you desire!

Though there wasn't cornbread to accompany this dish - we were still very satisfied. Feel free to substitute with whole wheat toast as I did for health's sake. And there you go.