Easy Vegetarian Solar Chili

The weather was back to normal today. Sun, sun, and more sun. Made a pot of vegetarian chili. It was a two step process. First I cooked some beans, you could use canned, but I like the taste of dried beans better. When they were tender I added them to the other ingredients and let the whole thing simmer some more. Martin had a bowl of it as a snack when he got home. For dinner I served it over pasta.




Vegetarian Chili

1/2 lb dry pinto beans
1 Tbs olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1 15 oz can mexican stewed tomatoes
1 15 oz can pumpkin
salt to taste

Soak beans overnight, drain, add enough water to cover them by an inch and simmer in the Sun Oven until tender. In a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients saute the onion in the oil until soft. Add the remaining ingredients and the drained cooked beans. Simmer in the Sun Oven until the sweet potatoes are soft.

Solar Vegetarian Chili Goes Wild

Today I made a big pot of sweet potato chili. I started with the beans. After soaking them overnight I put them in the Sun Oven first thing in the morning. While they were cooking I chopped the onion and sweet potato. I'd guess it was about half a pound of beans. When they were ready the bean-to-sweet potato ratio seemed a little off, so I decided to use two sweet potatoes. That meant I needed to use two cans of stewed tomatoes. Now I needed a bigger pot. A six quart pot is about the biggest you can fit in a Sun Oven and to do so you need to remove the leveling tray. Anytime you cook without the leveling tray you need to put something on the floor of the oven chamber to allow for air flow, a trivet or something like that.

Tomorrow I'll be out all day and the forecast is for thick cloud cover. I guess there won't be any more solar cooking going on until Wednesday.