Quinoa chili

So here is a real goody for a cold night. I discovered a recipe for this quinoa chile, and I've been meaning to try quinoa for a while. It's basically a wheat grain and a really smart idea for a vegetarian to incorporate into their diet. I loosely based this meal on a recipe I found, but a lot of it was by sight and taste.

First, you pick plenty of your favorite veggies that would mix well in chili. I chose two red bell peppers, a couple of mini sweet peppers, one small red onion, and two stalks of celery. The tomatoes come later in crushed or pureed form. You sweat the veggies in margarine or olive oil with a teaspoon of salt until tender but still with a bit of crisp. 

Once tender, throw in your two cans of chosen beans (preferably red kidney beans and black beans), 40 oz of crushed or pureed tomatoes (1.5 large cans),  1/3 cup brown sugar, and any and all spices you want to use. Bring all of this to a simmer, and then add in one cup of uncooked quinoa. I made the mistake of making the quinoa on its own and throwing it in at this point. This was stupid because I only made a 1/2 a cup for this monster chile AND with already being cooked, having it sit in the chili afterward made it disintegrate. So put the quinoa in to cook in the chili, and once it's cooked (about 18 minutes), your chile should be ready to eat!

I modified the recipe above because my resulting chile ended up with A. crappy quinoa and B. a HUGE amount of chili. So hopefully this recipe serves up a decent amount and you can taste the delicious quinoa.

Pretty!

Ingredients:

2 Tbs olive oil

1 bell pepper

2 small sweet peppers

1 small onion

2 stalks celery

salt & pepper to taste

1 can kidney beans

1 can black beans

40 oz pureed tomatoes

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 cup quinoa