Superbowl Chili

We're in the middle of a deep freeze here in New England.  With the cold and the Superbowl approaching - even though our Patriots didn't make it this year :(  -  I decided to make a chili recipe using this recipe from Real Simple.  It's a black bean and zucchini chili.  I like it because it has some extra veggies thrown in to help make it a more balanced meal and it's so delicious and comforting.  If you're planning a Superbowl party, I think this is a great recipe to use - for everyone, even the Tubie in the house!

Table
This is a slow cooker recipe, but unfortunately, the night I decided to make it, it was too late to use the slow cooker.  No problem, though.  It's easy enough to just make on the stove top too.

I sauteed the onions in a deep pan for a while and then added the zucchini

In a separate pan, I cooked up the ground beef.  Then you really just add the hamburger and all the rest of the ingredients into the zucchini-onion mixture.

My son helped carry the canned goods from the pantry to the countertop.  If the pan wasn't already hot, he probably would have helped dump them in...  By the way, I can't believe how relatively full his face looks now - much different from the super-skinny boy of a year ago.

And this is the resulting colorful mixture:

Tube
To make the blenderized version of this recipe, I used 2 cups of the chili, but that actually turned out to be too much volume of a blend and required some batching of the remaining ingredients, so for the write up, I've taken the chili down to 1 1/2 cups.  I also used 2 slices of a big round multigrain sourdough bread (at about 150 calories a piece).  If I were to make this again, I might substitute one of those big slices with some whole grain (oatmeal, bulger, cereal, etc) - just to make this blend a little more fibrous, if you know what I mean. ahem.

After the Shepard's Pie blend, I was a little nervous that the tomato paste and ground beef combination might cause more red, greasy film on the extension tubes and syringes.  But this blend was actually really clean.   (The real culprit must have been the ketchup - lesson learned)

At 0.9 calories per cc, the calorie density is on the lower side of my typical blends, but still pretty decent and fairly comparable to a lot of formulas.  Of course if you wanted to bump that up, I'd probably add whole grain - in addition to the 2 slices of bread.

And here's the G-tube blenderized recipe:

Black Bean & Zucchini Chili
Whole Milk	1 cup
flavored Kefir - 1% milkfat	1/2 cup
Sliced Peaches (canned with light syrup)	7.5 oz
Black Bean & Zucchini Chili	1 1/2 cup
Trader Joes Multigrain Sourdough	2 slices
Sunflower Seed Oil	3 T
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	39
Cal/oz	27.7
Cal/cc	0.9
% Fat	25%
% Carbohydrates	57%
% Protein	18%

Easy Shepherd's Pie

Several years ago, I found some recipes for taking semi-prepared ingredients to speed up the dinner making process.  I needed it then and still need it now.  One that I really liked was for Shepherd's Pie.  Total comfort food - great for cold winter nights.  I've altered the recipe a bit to make it more suited to the ingredients I buy and also to up the quantity of vegetables.

The first key to making this recipe quick is the pre-made mashed potatoes.  I know it doesn't take a ton of time to make your own - so go for it, if you want.  For this recipe, I bought a bag of frozen mashed potato disks from Trader Joes.  They're super easy, and you can make up as much or as little as you want because they're in those mini cylinder shapes.  For this recipe, I just used the whole bag.  In the past, if I didn't have this brand of mashed potatoes, I have bought the tubs of mashed potatoes from the refrigerator section.  If your supermarket deli sells mashed potatoes, you could also use that.

The second key to making this recipe quick is the frozen vegetables.  You really could use whatever mix you wanted.  This time I used a bag of "Organic Foursome" from Trader Joes.  It's corn, green beans, peas, and carrots - pretty fitting combination of vegetables for shepherd's pie.  I've used combinations before that have green and red peppers and broccoli that worked out really well also.  Whatever you want will probably work.  Except if it has baby corn in it - that stuff is kinda gross.

Table
Here's the basic recipe:

1 pound ground beef
1 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 pound frozen vegetables
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 3/4 pound mashed potatoes

Heat oven to 400 deg F.  Brown the ground beef.  Spoon off the excess fat.  Add the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.  Add the frozen vegetables to the ground beef mixture and heat up a few minutes, mixing frequently.

Place this meat & vegetable mixture into an oven safe casserole dish.

For the mashed potatoes, Morty helped me grate the cheese (hand over hand, of course).  He likes to help fix food - even if he doesn't like to eat it...

Mix the grated cheese into the prepared mashed potatoes (if using frozen, prepare according to package directions).  Spread the mashed potatoes on top of the meat & vegetables and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes.

And that's it!  So easy and so good when it's cold outside.

Tube

The g-tube blenderized version of this recipe is pretty easy too.  You just use about 1/4 of the shepherd's pie.  Here it is:

Whole Milk	1 cup
orange juice	1/2 cup
Shepherd's Pie	1/4 meal
applesauce	1 cup
olive oil	3 T
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	36
Cal/oz	36.3
Cal/cc	1.2
% Fat	20%
% Carbohydrates	63%
% Protein	17%

I recently got the Blendtec "Wildside" jar because after a little over a year of constant use, the seal on my original jar started to fail.  I chose the Wildside so that I could double my recipes and make a mix up every other day, instead of every day.  That's worked pretty well so far.  But when I made this recipe up, I doubled it.  And I also think that I used a little more than double of the 1/4 shepherd's pie.  I had originally planned to also add some kefir, but I totally ran out of room in the blender.

This recipe came out pretty thick - I'm sure because of the mashed potatoes and the omission of kefir.  What I ended up doing was warming the mix up each time before I squirted Morty's bolus in.  That helps make it easier to push.  I normally don't do that because I don't want to kill the good probiotic kefir cultures, but since I didn't use kefir this time, there's no reason not to.

The other tricky thing about this blend is that it kinda leaves a red greasy film in the syringe and tube.  Probably from the ground beef and ketchup combination.  You know what I'm talking about - the same thing that discolors tupperware.  Our extension tubes often get discolored from food, which isn't too big of a deal since we switch them out every few weeks anyway.  I did make sure that I used some dish soap when I rinsed the tube and syringe out for this blend - just to try and take the greasy film out.  That seemed to help.