Pumpkin Chili, Salad, and Garlic Bread

I love food.  All food.  I think that's why my veganism is going to last: who cares if I leave out a couple types of food, I've still got so much to try and I love it all.

Not that this is an unusual or exotic meal.  Just the opposite, it's simple and it was easy and cheap.  I usually only have one dish in a meal when it's just me--I love one-pot meals.  But I used a couple little time-saving strategies here so that I had a three course meal every day...though it was still the same meal for a week...any one else do that?  I tend to have the same thing for three days in a row.  This lasted five!

The Pumpkin Chili is from (never home)maker, a site I'd never visited before this review from seitan is my motor.  Seitan is my motor is a great German vegan blog (in English) that I read all the time but have never cooked from because her specialty is baking, and baking is not my thing, unfortunately.  But even when she isn't baking, the recipes look great.

I used my crockpot again here to make the kidney beans from dried, and I tried not even soaking them this time, which worked just fine.  I brought them to boil in water to cover, then cooked them in the crock on high for about 4 hours with a couple bay leaves, an onion cut in half, and a little thyme.  I used some of the cooking liquid in the Chili instead of the veggie broth (just remember you'll need to add a lot of extra salt).  I also roasted a pumpkin and used that instead of the puree from a can, and I sauteed some celery with the onions because I didn't have any corn to add.

The last change I made was I roasted the pumpkin seeds along side the pumpkin and used them to garnish.  It was a good, healthy chili--I have other favorites, but the pumpkin was fun.

I served the chili with a salad.  I tried something new here to make this easy and fast--on Sunday I washed and dried the lettuce, chopped it, and put it in a large plastic container with a tea towel.  I did the same for the other veggies (minus the tea towel): shredded a couple carrots, and chopped some sugar snap peas, green pepper, and celery.  Then I just had to assemble the salad each night, which went really quickly.  I also threw on some onion sprouts and chopped avocado.  I made the dressing in an almost empty Vegenaise jar with dried thyme, mustard, red wine vinegar, and evoo, and used that every evening, too.  I didn't go without a salad all week, because it was so easy.

Finally, I had a slice of garlic toast on the side.  I lightly toast a slice of whole wheat bread, rub it with a half-clove of garlic, butter it with Earth Balance, then throw it back in the toaster oven to get it good and bubbly and crunchy.