Chili

Roasted Carrot Chip Nachos

~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

Happy Thursday! Or for many of us who have the luxury of Good Friday off work tomorrow, Happy Friday! Aren’t long weekends just the best? My best friend from home is coming into town for the weekend and I couldn’t be more excited! Hilton Head is a pretty fun place to be when the weather is nice (which it’s predicted to be!) and visitors always give me an excuse to get out and about and be a tourist in my own city. It’s easy to take the fun shops, great restaurants and most of all, the BEACH for granted when you live here, so a fun visitor in town is a great reminder for me to appreciate this lovely resort island I call home Smile Can’t wait for you to get here Caite!

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Caite & I last June 🙂

Robert and I have had A LOT going on the last few weeks so I have done a lot of batch cooking. This week we’ve had several repeat dinners of salads topped with pulled rotisserie chicken (love these in a pinch) and THIS delicious BBQ chicken chili from one of my favorite food blogs. I highly recommend this recipe as it’s both easy and so tasty in a very unique way. It’s different from any other chili recipe I’ve ever tried and is full of flavor, so if you are a chicken chili chick (hellloooo alliteration) like me, give it a go!

Since I haven’t been making anything especially unique this week, I’m sharing a recipe I made a few weeks back that got the thumbs up from Robert. I have been on a roasted carrot kick for a while now. Roasting is not only one of the easier ways to prepare vegetables (besides boiling…barf) but it also really elevates the flavor. Roasting is by and large my favorite way to eat carrots and has given me a totally new appreciation for the little orange guys. Roasting made my view of carrots go from the sad, raw alternative to pretzels/chips on the dip platter, to basically akin to french fries. Talk about a 180.

Roasted Carrots 2

At first, I was peeling and cutting up the big carrots, then I wised up and realized that although less cost effective, buying the pre-cut veggies was a HUGE time saver. Carrots in particular come in about 6 different shapes, any of which are great to roast, except maybe the shredded ones. I found that a bag of the pre-cut crinkled carrot chips was the perfect amount for Robert and I to share as a side, and also the perfect shape to dunk into yummy dips like homemade ranch or chimi churri, or ketchup if you’re Robert and you get down like that. Eating these carrots as “chips” gave me the bright idea to substitute them for actual chips and prepare some nachos. Robert and I both love Mexican food and typically eat it at least once a week so I was sure this would be a winner, and as usual, I was right Smile

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A Hearty Halloween Treat: Sweet Heat Beef and Bean Chili

~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

Happy Halloween! Thanksgiving and Christmas will always be my favorite holidays, but Halloween holds a special place in my heart. Growing up, Halloween was always a time spent with friends; fall festivals, costume parties, scary movies, trick or treating, and of course my dad carting my friends and I to haunted houses so we could scream our heads off and have an excuse to hold hands with the boys we liked. Not so sure my dad had knowledge of the hand holding, or maybe he just preferred not to acknowledge it Smile

Renly the Lion                                                    Renly the cowardly lion

 *side note* I do remember one particular year that my dad had to go into the haunted house to rescue one of my girlfriends who had decided that it was WAY too scary and had sat down on the floor crying hysterically and refused to budge. I’m not sure who was more traumatized, my friend, my dad who had to carry a 13-year-old cowgirl out or the poor “monsters” at the haunted house who tried (unsuccessfully) to help. That year wasn’t so fun but at least we can laugh about it now! Or at least I can, she and my dad may not find it so humorous.

 Ghost                                               My favorite porch decoration

This year, Robert and I are going to spend Halloween with our family at his sister’s house. My sister-in-law is a great hostess and can always be counted on for a fun holiday party. This year she is making chili for a big family style dinner before we take the kids trick or treating. She has asked me to bring cornbread which I quickly agreed to before realizing that I’ve never actually made cornbread before. Whoops. There are going to be about 50 people at her house so the pressure is on. I’ve found a recipe that I want to tweak slightly and attempt….keep your fingers crossed for me! Taste testing a brand new recipe on 50 mostly strangers isn’t intimidating AT ALL!

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