I know it's only August, but we've had some cool evenings lately, which has left me excited for fall to get here (I mean, not too excited because summer is my ultimate fave). I can't get on board with pumpkin-y things yet, so the next best thing in my book was chili. I know my go-to chili recipe by heart, but I recently stopped eating meat. My mouth wasn't left watering after searching through vegetarian chili recipes, so I decided to create my own. Basically, it's about the same as my regular chili recipe, but with a few added beans (for extra protein) and no meat.
I grabbed any kind of beans I could off of the grocery store shelves, tomato juice and paste, chili powder, a green pepper, and an onion (full disclosure, I thought I grabbed an onion and didn't. In this batch of chili I used onion powder, but in the future I'll remember to grab that dang onion). I drained all of the beans and rinsed them, other than the chili beans. Those I put right into the crock pot. I used one cup of frozen lima beans (not the entire bag as requested by my kids). Once all beans were in, I poured the entire can of tomato juice in, scooped out the can of tomato pasta, chopped up the green pepper, and put a good amount of chili powder in.
The crock pot was put on low for 6 hours. At hour 5 1/2 I added a zucchini. At hour 6, we devoured. I added cheese and a dab of sour cream to the top of mine. Since the rest of my family is still (mostly) eating meat, I had a surprise for them. In a separate crock pot I made ground beef (with chili powder on it) that they added to their chili if they wanted.
