New Recipe #2: Vegetarian Chili (+ love for the #fattylifestyle)

In all the cooking I have done (I’m using the past tense because I’ve been an epic failure at being a chef this winter…blaming the weather for getting me down and making me crave fried junk foods), I have never made chili.  I suspect this is because a. I don’t like spicy foods and b. beans kind of gross me out (see my first new recipe post here).

But this weekend, Trail Methods hosted its first fatbike race, and we promised chili and beer at the finish line.  Two of the guys were making “real” chili, so I signed myself up to make veggie chili (although I was assured that most cyclists don’t care about that like runners do haha).  I found a recipe online and followed it loosely–I quadrupled it (which made a VAT of chili)–but I didn’t quadruple everything and added extras of some things.  The things I changed:

–used an entire 6 pack of red peppers–I love them, but they make me burp terribly (pretty sure I am mildly allergic), so I just wanted to get rid of the whole club pack and avoid being tempted to eat them with hummus and then spend the next two days “reliving” the experience

–used 6 cans of beans (instead of what should have been 8–I did 2 each of black beans, red kidney beans and light red kidney beans)

–used 2 big cans of crushed tomatoes instead of 4

–used canned corn instead of frozen because that’s what I had on hand here

–left out the cilantro and lime juice

–this was per the instructions, but to quadruple the recipe I used an ENTIRE spice container of chili powder!!  Also an insane amount of garlic.

Sadly, I have no pictures of this finished product because I totally didn’t think about it–I finished making it at 10:30 at night, collapsed into bed, and then spent much of the following day running around doing last minute set-up and then trying to clear the course of errant snow for the second race.  I also didn’t try it, but it was at the very least edible, although that may have just been the result of about 40 riders (plus our amazing volunteers!) being hungry from the day’s festivities.  Either way, we went home with only a small amount of the vat o’ chili, so it must’ve been alright…

So now onto the love for the #fattylifestyle.  Leading up to this race, pretty much everything that could go wrong did.  Eric wanted to cancel multiple times and was extremely unhappy (this is a mild assessment, for more info see his post here).  This unhappiness and uncertainty over the race lasted for pretty much all of February, which made an already miserable month (lowest temperature for a month EVER on record here in Rochester????) just a little more frustrating.  Saturday morning, as we shoveled and snowblowed the course AGAIN, he AGAIN said we should just cancel, I was finally starting to think that maybe that was the best option, or at least the one that required the least amount of painful shoveling.

I’m glad we kept the race because it seemed for the most part to go really well.  I’ve said it before:  Seeing people’s faces at a race, knowing they are having a wonderful time all because of our planning and hard work (and this goes beyond just Eric and I because there were COUNTLESS people who played a role in the race) is very rewarding.  I’d imagine it’s like how women say that they forget the pain of childbirth when they first hold their beautiful baby.  It’s easy to forget the hard work and frustration when you know you did something so good.  I will always be the one picking everything apart and looking for ways to improve an already great day, but overall we had a solid race–the course was “the most fun I’ve had racing” and “well-groomed” (at least for the fatties who rode first), the beer and chili were good, and people loved hanging out in the heated lodge afterwards.  While it was a very long weekend, my arms and back are screaming today, I slept for almost 10 hours and am still tired, I wouldn’t really change much about yesterday’s race and post-race.  It was great to see people out, riding and having so much fun, then hang out in the lodge talking to old friends and making new ones.

That being said, if I don’t see or shovel North Ponds Park again this winter, that’d be totally fine with me….

Try the chili recipe. Let me know what you think.