Following the ideas of this post, I have come to realize that no matter how much of a stretch something is, you can call it a taco if you put in quotes.  Rather than justifying my reasoning for calling it chili, I decided it was easier to put into quotes.

I started with this recipe for vegan white bean chili, and realized I had no white beans, so I used black beans and pinto beans instead.  I had some garbanzos I wanted used up, so I threw them as well.  And halfway done, deciding I wanted it thicker, I threw in some lentils, figuring they would be tasty and dissolve into something thicker.

Without further ado, here is the ingredient list:

  • Black beans
  • Pinto beans
  • Green lentils
  • Garbanzo beans
  • Two serrano peppers
  • Two anaheim peppers
  • One yellow onion
  • Garlic
  • Celery
  • Carrots
  • White onions
  • Frozen okra
  • Frozen corn
  • Frozen snozzberries (just kidding)
  • Three bell peppers
  • Five scary dried red peppers
  • Oregano
  • Paprika
  • Chili powder
  • Sliced peppered salami that a friend gave me
  • Some corn flour
  • Some other spices to taste

I soaked the garbanzo, black and pinto beans from the night before - well, actually, I soaked the garbanzo beans about a month ago and didn’t use them and they’ve been living in my freezer ever since.  That’s why I was using them.  I drained the beans, then I blended one and a half bell peppers, the spicy peppers, half the onion, and half the garlic, and put that green soup in the pot with the beans.  I set that to boil for an hour or two, added the spices, and worried that I’d added too much.

I drank a lot of wine and chopped the other vegetables into little pieces.  The wine is why I can’t remember exactly what spices I put in.  At some point I was figuring the chili wouldn’t thicken appropriately, so I added lentils (there was still enough cooking time that they would dissolve into tastiness) and corn flour (I read that on the chili recipe linked above).  This did thicken it enough that it was appropriate.  I added some carrots at this point too.

Further towards the end I added all the vegetables.  I kept finding random things to add; it kind of got out of hand.  I had a bag of frozen okra in the freezer, frozen corn, at some point it felt like I kept digging further back and I kept finding odder things (though I did use up all the turnip greens on a non-Sunday cooking day; those would have been in here too but I found an empty bag instead).

At the very end I added the salami which I carefully cut into quarter-circles.

While it was very spicy, and I did kind of go wrong with “too much spices such that it didn’t taste like anything”, I think if I hadn’t said “I’m afraid it’s too spicy”, I think people wouldn’t have thought it quite too spicy.  The spicy-eaters are fond of everything spicy and gobbled it up without yogurt and sour cream; the non-spicy-eaters feasted on the spinach salad instead.