Green Options

After years of experimentation, I have come up with the perfect recipe for easy, hearty, healthy, stick-to-the-ribs tasty chili, right in the slow cooker.  And I’m going to share it with you.

But first, let’s talk about what you can do to make your chili — and all your cooking, really — more “green.”

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution from one our content partners, Divine Caroline.

By Allison Fishman of MainStreet for DivineCaroline.com

One of my favorite dinners as a kid was “leftover night,” when my parents would resurrect the greatest hits from the previous week.

Only now do I realize they were not only serving me delicious encores, they were also saving money on grocery bills.

By high school I was a leftover epicure. I knew which leftover dishes were better cold (lo mein and pizza), which improved when microwaved (stews and chili’s), and how to morph certain leftovers into a totally different dish, even better than the first.

Here are six of my favorite recyclable meals:

With an abundance of sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts in local Farmers Markets, there’s no better way to use the season’s bounty than this hearty chili, a perfect dish for cold nights.

A barrage of emails flooded my work inbox. Usually this indicates some kind of burning deadline or project gone awry. The topic of such frenzied communication in this case? Chili Fridays.

Given the, uh, heat of the chili debate, I decided a bit of research was in order. It is time to settle the Chili Friday Controversy.

Con Carne or Sin Carne?
The most pressing issue in the Great Chili Debate seems to be the question of meat versus no meat. Folks are just plain passionate about their chili. So, which came first, meat or bean?

Meat. Which likely explains why most major chili cookoffs disqualify entries that contain beans. Evidence of the chili dating back to pre-Columbian times consisted of meat and chili peppers, and occasionally included masa, or corn meal.

Now, just because those early recipes contained corn meal, in no way does this legitimatize “Frito Pie.” Greasy, bland meat, fritos and processed “cheese spread” is not chili. It’s not even actual food.

The use of starchy filler in the recipe does open the door to the question of beans. It is thought that, beans were first added to the dish as a way to make the dish go farther for families that could not afford the all meat version.