Where's the Beef?

In an effort to eat healthier (read: get back to my pre-baby weight), I made a meatless chili last night.

I used protein crumbles instead of ground beef. The crumbles actually looked like meat in that they were brown and sort of meat-like in texture. Plus, I was going to be covering all that pesky fake-meat flavor with crushed canned tomatoes and an assortment of spices. So, I started cooking and was feeling pretty confident that what the recipe called a "hearty chili" could indeed be hearty -- sans any bovine influence.

About three-quarters of the way into the process, I decided to sneak a little taste. Hmmmm. Tomato-y. Slurp. Green-pepper-y. Liick. Hmmmmm. Not bad. Searching for a word to describe what I was tasting. It's not overly spicy. Not overly salty. Not overly onion-y. Oh, wait...yes, the word I'm looking for is...bland.

Despite the seasonings (and I did add more to try and pep up my sad, bland chili), my protein-crumble pot was missing a crucial element that I hadn't considered until the very moment I tasted it. Fat. The crock-o-healthiness I had created was all the things you want in a dinner -- veggies, protein, etc. -- without that thing that makes us actually want to eat food...flavor.

So, in the end we threw in some sour cream (fat-full), cheddar cheese (fatter-full), and some corn chips to boot. The family gave the dinner an enthusiastic thumbs up ("Yummmy Mommy, Yummmmmy! Can I have some more corn chips?)

The moral of the story here? When a recipe calls for protein crumbles...substitute with ground beef.