Monday, November 2, 2015

It's Chili TIME!!!

I love the month of October! The leaves are changing, there's a chill in the air, you can find pumpkin flavored everything, Halloween (I love dressing my babies up!!) and it's my BIRTHDAY! I also love love love the yummy fall foods - pumpkin seeds, pumpkin oatmeal, squash and chili are some of my favs!

My hubby and I started a new little tradition - we made chili every Halloween. The main reason is that it's easy and we can just leave it cooking while we are out trick-or-treating with the kiddos and after a long, we can fill up big hearty bowls and not have to do any more work...just shovel it in and hope to reverse the sugar coma... haha!

This year, we went to the pumpkin patch on Halloween and got some fresh butternut squash, so we decided to make chicken & butternut squash chili....WOWIE, it was amazing!! One of the best, yet!! It was so easy and such a hit even with our baby boy (toddler) Tilman!

First, check out my cuties on Halloween....







CHICKEN & BUTTERNUT SQUASH CHILI
What you need:
1LB ground chicken
1/2 medium butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 Anaheim pepper, de-seeded and diced
1 can drained kidney beans
1 can drained pinto beans
1-2C vegetable broth (depending how thick you like it)
2TBSP lime juice
sea salt & pepper to taste
2tsp cumin
2-3tsp chili powder
1/2tsp garlic powder

How to:
Saute onion & pepper for 5-7 minutes. Add chicken to skillet and cook through. Transfer these items and everything else to the crockpot. Cook on low for 2-3 hours... until squash is soft but not mushy. We topped ours with avocado, cilantro & homemade pumpkin seeds (recipe below) ;-) yum!!


PUMPKIN SEEDS
What you need:
2-3C pumpkin seeds, remove as much goop and stringy stuff as possible 
1TBSP coconut oil
salt & pepper to cover seeds
1tsp chili powder
1tsp garlic powder

How to:
Preheat oven to 350. Coat baking sheet with coconut oil. Spread seeds on sheet, trying not to overlap. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper...then other seasonings. Bake 10 minutes, then take seeds out & shuffle around to flip and mix up. Place back in oven for 10 minutes. Mix around again and either leave out or (if you like them extra brown and crispy, like us) put in for another 5-7 minutes.

Not a pretty picture, but they sure taste AMAZING!!


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