Slow Cooker Sweet Potato Chili with Hatch Chiles, Corn, and Beef

Sweet and spicy chili that simmers in the slow cooker for an easy supper. This chili has beef, sweet potatoes, 3 kinds of beans, corn, peppers and Hatch chiles for amazing flavor

 Follow me | Pinterest | Instagram | Facebook

When my friend Mary brought her Sweet Potato and Black Bean chili to the thrift shop for lunch, I spooned up that bowl of spicy comfort and was smitten.  Mary's chili, adapted from The Clueless Vegetarian (Amazon affiliate link) was spicy yet went down smoothly, and like all great chilies each person can customize their bowl with a variety of toppings.

I don't know about you, but I tend to become smitten with foods and cook them over and over.  Being a seasonal eater works well with this tendency, because I'm always moving onto what's up next, seasonally, and don't really have time to get into food ruts. At least it works well when fresh vegetables are appearing each week in our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box!  During the winter months I tend to rely on the produce that can store longer, like the sweet potatoes and butternut squash in the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, as well as vegetables I've canned or frozen.

I was so smitten with this chili that I made it several times. Each time I loved it even more.  My kids gobbled it up.  Shoot, it was even the first leftover my spouse scrounged out of the fridge when he returned from his most recent deployment.  The combination of colorful beans and sweet potatoes from this chili inspired my Harvest Sweet Potato Salsa.

Serving chili is a great meal for a variety of eaters--you can top it with a whole host of extras if you like.  Some of our favorite toppings:

• red and green salsas
• pickled peppers
• black olives
• shredded cheese
• sour cream
• tortilla chips

My friend Rebbie hosted a chili party which included an oven full of baked potatoes.  My kids created their own loaded baked potatoes from Rebbie's topping selections and missed out on her award-winning chili, but we all went home full and happy.

Orange-Spiked Beet and Walnut Spread

Toasted walnuts, roasted** beets, and a kick of orange juice brightens up this vegan spread

 Follow me | Pinterest | Instagram | Facebook

If you read Wednesday's post and thought I sounded conflicted about posting so many meat-containing recipes in a row, you're very perceptive.  I've got a Guinness-soaked easy meal, a terrific Thai cold-busting soup, and a Fast From The Farm Share supper on deck--but they all involve meat.  And I feel the need to share a vegan recipe in the midst of all this meat so here's one that's been percolating on my mental back burner for a while.

Why do I say percolating?  Well, the recipe I wanted to make just wasn't working for me.  I kept trying variations within the parameters I'd established, and when I hit upon the final concoction that worked I realized I didn't have the exact proportions to share with you.  So I'm going to explain the concept, give you some measurements as a jumping off point, and leave it at that.  I mean, with 6 ingredients [including salt and pepper] there's plenty of 'taste and adjust' for each of us to do.

I'm always on the lookout for new ways to love beets from my CSA farm share, so when I got an email from goop including a recipe for beet and walnut spread I mentally filed it under the 'Beet Recipes to Try' section of my brain.

Don't tell me you don't have a Beet Recipes to Try area of your brain? Pity.

This Beet and Walnut Dip is my inspiration, and I am sure it is delicious, but I a) was running low on tahini and had some hummus to make and b) desired to have another tahini-free appetizer in my spread.  So I took the beets, walnuts, olive oil and salt from that recipe, and was trying . . .  trying . . . trying . . . to make something other than BeetyWalnutButter.  I failed. I was about to grab the goat cheese and de-veganify it when I remembered how well beets and oranges go together (hello, Beet Juice Mimosas!). I grabbed some freshly squeezed Hamlin orange juice from the Band Fruit Fundraiser, threw the concoction back into the food processor to incorporate the juice, and DONE!  The orange juice and olive oil emulsify to fluff up the BeetyWalnutButter into an Orange-spiked Beet and Walnut Spread.

As much as I love my Beet and Goat Cheese Spread, I was looking for a vegan addition to my Awesome Vegetable Apps and Snacks collection (link to my Pinterest board) and this one works great.  I like it on carrots or crackers and spread on toasted sourdough bread in a sandwich.  I think it would be delicious topped with sautéed mushrooms, as the earthy flavors of beets and mushrooms make a nice pairing in my favorite Danish smørrebrød:  liverpostej.

If you've got beets, walnuts, an orange and a bit of time to use the oven, as well as a food processor or amazing knife skills, you can enjoy this vegan spread today.  It makes a colorful addition to an appetizer table.

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, or the garden abundance. More recipes! I'm pinning more recipes to my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like behind-the-scenes shots, please follow me on Instagram. When I encounter an article that makes me think or makes me laugh, I share it on my Facebook page--please follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Open Faced Liver Paté LeverPostej Meatloaf Sandwiches

A traditional open-faced sandwich featuring meatloaf flavored with bacon and liver, topped with pickled beets, sautéed mushrooms, even crispy bacon and onions

 Follow me | Pinterest | Instagram | Facebook

This open-faced sandwich is for the hard core carnivore out there.  Not those of you who dabble in boneless, skinless, chicken breasts.  Nope.  This is for those of you who will eat the whole cow, tongue to tail.  [I deliberately exclude myself from the head, though if someone presents me with a slice of head cheese I'll eat it.  I'm just not gonna make it and blog about it, okay?] It briefly passed through my brain to apologize to my vegetarian readers [thank you for stopping by! If you'd like a vegetarian open-faced sandwich recipe, here's my shaved beet one] for posting yet another meat-containing recipe, and then I realized that no, I'm going to own this.

In my opinion, it is disrespectful to the animal to cherry pick the handful of parts that you choose to consume.  I'm not saying to rush out and eat bung, instead I am saying to broaden your horizons and try more than just steaks and burgers or boneless skinless chicken breasts.  Beef tongue is pretty tasty, and the tail--man, I'm drooling just thinking about Elise's oxtail stew recipe.  But each bovine only has 1 tongue and, sadly, 1 tail.  There's a lot more to that animal--including the liver.

This, as you can tell from the head-scratching 'how do you pronounce it?**' title, contains liver.  If you like liver, you'll probably love it.  If you don't like liver, this smells like bacon while it's cooking and looks like meatloaf after it's baked, so give it a try.  My kids are not fans of the beets and mushrooms, so for them they are just eating a meatloaf sandwich, but you're welcome to make it your own. Try this, broaden your horizons, and respect the animal that you choose to consume.

This recipe is my adaptation of a traditional Danish open-faced sandwich or smørrebrød (literal translation is butter bread) using liver paté or leverpostej.  Like a Reuben sandwich is traditionally served with sauerkraut, swiss cheese, and thousand island dressing, the Danish leverpostej smørrebrød is served with pickled beets and sautéed mushrooms, sometimes crispy bacon or onions.