Cooking for health: Turkey three bean chili

First of all let me start off with the fact that this cooking stuff is very hard work. It is very clear why most people don't or can't do it......now I hesitate with the word can't because I don't think it is a very good word. We ultimately can do whatever we put out mind to doing. If you have a very busy life you may need to be a little more organized in your planning and preparing. But there is no doubt that being healthy takes a lot of time, patience and money.

On that note lets move on to my chili which was one of the least disastrous things I have cooked this weekend. I took the recipe again from the Whole life nutrition cookbook, which means pretty soon I am going to need to find another cook book if I am going to want some new ideas. It is under the three bean chili recipe but I decided to add ground turkey and used a few ideas from the vegetarian chipotle chili recipe. I have to say actually cooking recipes equals a lot of trips to the grocery store and people looking at you funny when you ask them if they have something with a funny name such as kombu. It turns out kombu is a sea vegetable that contains glutamic acid which helps to tenderize and breakdown the indigestible, gas producing sugars in beans (information obtained from whole life nutrition cookbook).

Step 1:  I started the beans soaking the night before but it was pretty late. I would of put all the beans together until my husband said the black beans would of turned everything black and should be soaked separately. I actually let the beans soak until the next day until early afternoon.

Step 2:  I drained the water off the beans and rinsed well. Put them all in a pot with 8 cups water with some kombu. Simmered for 1 1/2 hours.

Step 3:  I used another pot and put on medium heat. Added 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 whole onion chopped. Sauteed for about 5 mins, then added 2 tbsp crushed garlic, 5 carrots sliced, 1 green pepper chopped, 2 zucchini's sliced, 1 tbsp cumin and chili powder,  2 tbsp oregano, 1 cup cilantro chopped, and I also added my own creation some chipotle red pepper (so yes this is some SPICY chili). I sauteed this for over a couple mins since I was chopping while sauteing so it ended up cooking longer then the instructions.

Step 4: I added diced tomatoes 28 oz, tomato sauce 14 oz, beans and water they were cooked in and 1 pack of browned ground turkey. I simmered this for about 25 minutes. Didn't add the herbamare yet but thought about adding it when I serve a bowl. Just a little to taste.

Let me tell you a little about herbamare, which is an herb salt spice and I had to go to 3 different stores to find it. Finally found it at tops food store. The only place I found kombu was tacoma boys in puyallup but it was in a soup packet so I bought that and just used the kombu.

My goal is to serve it over a little brown rice but this may take a while since I just burned my first attempt. Now you would think that would be the easiest thing to fix but when you are too busy trying to clean up the mess you made with all the cooking you kinda forget about checking what is on the stove.

Let me end this by saying how exhausted I am now and this is my weekend off. I am sure for an experienced cook it may not take so much out of them but for me this is very challenging. I have more recipes to come but that will have to be after a little relaxation time since I do have to go back to work tomorrow. At least I have a lot of leftovers building up so I will be able to use this during the week. I really do like cooking this really healthy food for myself but wonder how I will keep up. It also makes me think about the fact that I want to have kids in a few years and I want them to be healthy from the start. If I have trouble keeping up with myself how in the world will I keep up with kids. I will just take a big deep breath and keep moving on. Life doesn't have to be so overwhelming. Learning how to stay more relaxed in intense situations I am sure will save me from being quite so exhausted. As with everything in life including my workouts I use a lot more energy then is actually needed. Just one more thing to work on getting better at.