I was in the neighborhood of The Veggie Grill, which is about 25 miles from my house (ugh, I wish it were closer!), so I decided to stop in for lunch before going to my next work location. I get there and I was about to order the same thing I ALWAYS order – All Hale The Kale Salad with Blackened Chicken – when I decide that I need to try something else. Imagine that! I’m such a creature of habit! So resistant to trying new things because I love the ‘old’ things soooooo much!! So, I compromised. I said to myself, “Self, you should try something new but I know you want that Kale salad, so why don’t you get the soup and salad combo?!?!” Brilliant!! I ordered 1/2 of the Kale salad and a bowl of chili….and that chili Rocked My World!!! I was in love! So much so that I didn’t even eat a bite of the salad, I packed it up to go, but the chili, yum, yum, yum! So now I’m obsessed with chili!

That weekend, we were headed to beautiful San Luis Obispo and there were only 2 places there that I knew serve vegan food so that night my hubby and I went to Big Sky Cafe and guess what is staring me in the face as soon as I opened the menu? Yup, CHILI!!! This one was vegetarian but I just omitted the queso fresco and I had my vegan meal. That chili was even better than the chili at The Veggie Grill. It was so good I had it the next day for lunch and dinner.

On the drive home, I got onto my Whole Foods iPhone app and found a recipe for Vegetarian Chipotle Chili. We stopped at Whole foods on the way home and I picked up all of the ingredients for the chili. I replaced the cheese in the recipe with Daiya Cheddar Cheese shreds and the sour cream with Tofutti Sour Cream to make this a vegan dish. I also used more beans than the recipe called for because you end up with a lot of broth/sauce but not a lot of beans. So I used 2 cans of black beans, 2 cans of kidney beans and 2 cans of white kidney beans (cannellini beans) for a more hearty chili. Now, when you buy chipotle chiles, they usually come in a can with adobo sauce and every time I buy them for a recipe, I end up wasting the leftovers because recipes only call for 1-2 chiles. So what I do is put the contents of the whole can in the food processor (chiles and adobo) and blend the chiles and the adobo together. Then I pour the mixture into ice cube trays and freeze them. Once frozen, I just remove them from the tray and store in the freezer in a ziploc bag. For this recipe, I used 2 chipotle/adobo ice cubes, but remember, I like it HOT! You may want to experiment with the spice level, adding 1/2 cube at a time until you reach your hotness limit.

Enjoy!