Eggplant Would-be Chili

This wasn't quite a fail. But it was not a success. And I won't be making it again.

I had two gorgeous eggplants to use. Gorgeous. Not the full purple ones, but the streaks of purple on white. Gorgeous. I wanted a soup with eggplant and garbanzos (I had cooked up garbanzos earlier in the week and wanted to finish them off).

I also wanted a chili. To be chili, a dish needs cumin, chili peppers/powder, and oregano. I like my chili with beans (come on, vegan here!). And I wanted my chili to have eggplant.

I was out of onions, so this chili didn't get any onions. (I didn't even have onion powder or granules, only garlic.) I had a little bit of red lentils that I thought would add good texture and iron, and millet remaining from a lunch meal for me earlier in the week. I don't know why this turned out so blah.


I chopped up my eggplants, chopped up two small red turnips, added the golden zuchinni I had cut up for J (she asked for "chinni" and then ate one bite of one piece), about a cup of cooked millet, my garbanzos (about a cup), cumin, oregano, Mexican chili powder, 1/3 cup dry red lentils, and 1 1/4 cups water. Hello slowcooker Friday night, cook please so that I have chili for Saturday.

Ok, maybe I know what happened. I was afraid of the spices (I wanted J to be able to eat, and the Mexican chili powder has been too much for her in the past), so I didn't use enough initially. When I tasted the would-be chili in the morning, I added more. But it just wasn't enough. It looked like chili, but the taste just wasn't there. I added fresh oregano and roasted squash seeds when J and I ate it for lunch, which really improved the dish, but still, not something I'm making again. And J had a really hard time eating it...because she didn't like it at all! Eck!

The leftovers...I'm thinking maybe putting them in bread or something. We'll see as the week progresses.

Soup Fail

It's hard to mess up soup, but I did it.

I had grand dreams for this soup...winter squash plus adzuki beans plus apples. It should have been delish. But alas and alack for my poor soup, I decided to cook it in the slow cooker overnight (because I got home very late last night from Penn Station to see my Mom and Sister, who were there for two hours between trains).

For posterity (thanks Lynn), here's what I did - and what not to do again.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups cooked adzuki beans
1 medium long pumpkin squash, thing rings, then thirds
1 1/2 granny smith apples, sliced very thin
1 red delicious apple, sliced very thin
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
1-2 T olive oil
1-2 tsp frozen fresh lime juice
two shakes black pepper
two shakes ground cinnamon
pinch ground cloves
2 vegan buillion cubes (Rapunzel)
4 cups boiling water

What I did -- Where did I go wrong?
First, I cooked up 1 cup of dry adzuki beans earlier in the day. It made 3 1/2 cups cooked. I used 1 1/2 in the Failed Soup, and put the other two in the fridge for later this week.
I needed to use up some of the too many apples that my m-i-l keeps bringing over, so I decided to use apples with the squash. I used 1 1/2 granny smith -- 1/2 because J and I used the other 1/2 for our breakfast oatmeal! :) I peeled and cored the apples, then sliced them thin.
I peeled the pumpkin squash, scooped out the insides, and the cut each half into rings and the rings into thirds.
I chopped the onion and minced the garlic and ginger. I put those into the crockpot after I heated it up and added some olive oil (letting the oil get warm first). I let them "cook" for five minutes before adding everything else.
Add all the other ingredients, stir well, put on low to cook. Stir once more before going to bed. (This is where I think I went wrong. The cooking for many hours killed the soup, I think.)
In the morning, turn to warm, and use immersion blender to puree half the soup.

It smelled funky. I put a bunch in a container for me to take to work, with red quinoa. We'll see how it tastes in a little bit...but I was not subjecting J to this today. I told D not to even bother trying to feed it to her. We still have Saturday's wonderful stew (I will post about that later), so she can eat that today. :)