My Favorite Winter Chili--Good For You Too!

If you want a really good chili recipe that is low-carb, high flavor and low-cholesterol, I bring you Rachel's Chili:

You will need..

• 1 pack of Yves Veggie Ground Round (usually found in the deli or veggies area) "original"
• 1 celery stalk & mushroom pieces if you like them & onions if you like them (pearl onions are fun)
• 1 big can of crushed tomatoes (the cheapest can is fine)
• 1 regular can of Navy beans
• 1 regular can of Romano beans
• couple cloves of chopped or crushed garlic
• 5 tsp of chili powder
• Splenda (if you're watching sugar and maple syrup if you're not)
• a crock pot

So basically you open all the cans of beans and the crushed tomatoes and pour them into the crock pot. Mix it all around. Then you chop up the celery (not the whole thing, but most of it) and add them and any other veggies to the mix. Add the garlic and the 5 tsp of chili powder.

Mash up the ground round (or use regular gr.beef if you want actual meat in it, but that adds some cholesterol into it) and add it in.

Sprinkle in about a 1/4 cup of Splenda or squirt in some maple syrup to add some flavoring and to take the edge off the tomatoes.

Turn on the crock pot and set to high for a few hours or low if you're going to be gone 8 hrs or so.

Makes: 13 servings, 1 full ladel is a serving... (based on adding celery & mushrooms, and using Veggie Ground Round "original", these are your stats)

113 calories

0.7 g fat

20 g carbs

6.3 g fiber

11 g protein

Net Carbs = 13 g with only 5% calories from fat.

This is my favorite rug

I saw this rug in Las Vegas once and I have pined for it ever since. If you see this rug, please capture it for me.

My first foray into the darkroom

I took an introductory photography course at Fanshawe College in London and for our first experiment in the darkroom, I produced this cool image. I tried to erase some dust spots, but I made a funny mark on the digital file.

Curse of the Tree Swallows

A pretty dramatic title for my entry...

So I was just finishing my evening commute home from work (about 15 minutes between) and as I pulled into my apartment complex at dusk, there were the usual silent swarms of tree swallows gathering for their night roosting.

I admire these birds and how they move in an amoebic like manner with no particular bird taking the lead at any given time, but all move together in different directions.

As I was admiring these fascinating birds, I was shat upon.

I laughed to myself and quickly made my way upstairs to try and get it off before it set into my wool coat. Then I put dinner in the oven, built my laundry cart and hauled it down to the laundry room where I tried to sort into 3 washers.

I pumped my $1.75 into the last washer and hit the button (liquid detergent already in) and realized there was no power to the washer. [ insert long Napoleon Dynamite sigh of exasperation here ].

So I pulled out the wet jeans of the washer next to the dead one and folded them neatly on the counter for whomever their owners are and then hit the change release buttons to get my $1.75 back. That also didn't work.

I took the elevator upstairs and called the superintendant and reached "Gerri" who is my absolute least favorite superintendant because she uses all her polite words but exudes "bitch" in every interaction. She refused to help repeating that "the office is closed".

So while this does mean that I won't be able to dry 2 loads tonight, only 1 since I need to reallocate my funds to a working washing machine, it does mean that I still get my laundry washed.

The moral of the this story is that even the seemingly nicest people or birds will poo on you so take cover.

Fence at the end of the path

This is not a great shot due to the heavy shadows and the lack of clear sight to the fence, however I wanted to show some evolution of me using a champagne filter.