Vegan Chili

I made this delicious chili Sunday night. It's a simple dish which requires time simmering on the stove, but not constant attention.

I served it with fingerling potatoes, which I thought was an excellent combination - like baked potato with baked beans. Larry preferred to eat saltines with his bowl of chili. Rice or cornbread would also be good side dishes.

The beans I used are called barbecue beans - they're a little larger than navy beans and have a slightly green tinge. Kidney beans work well too. The green lentils make the chili thick, so you don't need to use ground beef substitutes made of chemically-flavored soy beans.

The chili improves for a few days in the fridge, and can be frozen for longer storage.

Vegan Chili
1 cup barbecue beans
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, diced
1/4 cup oil
1 cup green lentils
4 tbsp chili powder
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp paprika
14-oz can diced tomatoes
1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
1/4 tsp salt

Cook the beans until almost cooked but still a little crunchy. Drain and set aside.

Sauté onion, garlic and carrot in oil until soft, about 8 minutes. Add cooked beans, raw lentils, chili powder, coriander, paprika, tomatoes with the juice, and 2 cups water. Stir. Bring to the boil and simmer 1 hour, adding more water if necessary. Stir in the soy sauce and simmer another 30-60 minutes. Stir in salt to taste.

Serves 6-8

The Breads of France

I just found a great book - The Breads of France and how to make them in your own kitchen by Bernard Clayton, Jr.

Larry and I relished the bread when we were in France last summer, but this author took it a step further and learned from the bakers how to make the bread at home.

It's a book from the 70s, with black and white pictures of Parisians and their bread that look like they're from the '50s. Clayton himself is an anachronism - a picture shows him kneading dough, tie neatly in place. Then putting a loaf in one of his indoor woodfire ovens, tie still crisply knotted.

I thought I would enjoy it as a quirky book, but then the recipes drew me in. Clayton really baked these loaves, using American flour and standard equipment (although he has a woodburning oven, the recipes all work in a gas or electric one), and came up with the same texture and flavor he remembered from his visit to France.

I am intrigued, and determined to bake my way through this book.

Fortunately, bread freezes well, so we won't have to eat everything I bake fresh from the oven. (The first recipe makes 4 loaves of bread.) Although we will be tempted. Does anything smell better than fresh-baked bread?

I'll let you know how it goes along the way.

Tomato Spinach Soup

White beans are the surprise ingredient in this tomato soup.

Puréed white beans are a wonderful foundation for creamy soups and sauces, for dips, and even as a base (instead of rice or mashed potatoes) for a scoop of cooked greens.

In this soup, they substitute for dairy products to make a creamy vegan soup.

The recipe makes a lot, so it's perfect for a pot luck on a cool evening. And, because it has no dairy products in it, it will freeze well.

I used dried white lima beans that I buy at the Hollywood Farmers Market. They are last year's crop, so they cook quickly without soaking - about 90 minutes. If you don't have dried limas, use cannelinis or any other white bean. If your beans are older, you could soak them overnight to shorten the cooking time. Or use canned beans - although it will take 6 cans to make the right amount of beans. (And dried are way cheaper.)

Use a well-flavored vegetable stock (I use my standard one which you can see here) or add extra salt and pepper while the soup cooks.

If you don't have a lime, use a tablespoon or so of lemon juice or white wine vinegar - it's there to give a boost to the flavor.

And when you serve this soup, call it creamy tomato spinach soup - no one has to know it's full of protein-rich, fiber-rich, incredibly healthy beans.

They can just know that it tastes great.

Tomato Spinach Soup
4 cups dried white beans
2 cups vegetable stock
2 -14oz cans tomato sauce
4 cups spinach
juice of 1/2 a lime

Cook the beans in simmering water until they are very tender. Drain, then purée the beans in batches in a food processor or blender. Let the machine run until the purée is really smooth, adding stock as needed so it is not at all grainy.

Put the purée in a large pot with any remaining stock. Start it warming, covered, over medium-low heat. Stir in the tomato sauce and cook gently until it's warmed through.

Stem the spinach, and chop if the leaves seem too big.

Add the spinach and lime juice to the pot. Stir well. Cook until the spinach is wilted. Taste for seasoning and serve hot.

Serves 8-10

Industrial Agriculture

I've been aggravated for a while about how cheap industrial US-grown corn produced by the likes of Archer Daniels Midland has put a lot of Mexican farmers out of work. The companies export the corn to Mexico and sell it for less than their local farmers can grow it.

But I didn't realize that it's not just the corn used in tortillas that is exported cheaply.

A lot of corn is fed to hogs. American hog companies move into Mexico, import cheap (gmo) corn from the US, grow fat hogs, and then slaughter them in Mexico where labor is cheap. Then the ham is sold here in the US. Big US companies like Smithfield have forced the closure of many small Mexican butchers.

I learned about this in a recent article in The Nation, which you can read here.

I don't want to support agricultural multinationalism. That's why I shop at the Hollywood Farmers Market from small farmers who have a minimal footprint of damage.

Larry buys meat from a farmer who raises his own cows, pigs and chickens, takes them to a USDA-approved slaughterhouse where they are prepped and frozen, and then sells them at famers markets. (The LA Times wrote about this farmer, Greg Nauta of Rocky Canyon Farms in Atascadero. You can read their article here.) Greg's cattle are completely grass-fed, unlike so many cows that are finished with a couple of weeks of grain to make them fatter. Fortunately he has people like us who are willing and able to pay extra for the privilege of knowing where our food comes from.

Industrial agriculture destroys too many societies. We all need to do what we can to shop locally from small non-industrial farmers.