I stopped buying ground beef for quite a while now, mostly because grass-fed was too expensive for my little budget. It’s not a must-have around our household anyway. When I lived in Texas, I think I ate the same amount of meat in the six months that I lived there as I have in my whole life until now.
When I was little, there used to be a local grocery store called Ukrop’s. It’s now part of the Giant/Martin’s chain, but it still runs the in-store café and premade foods. I was a sickly kid, so I saw the pediatrician a lot. After seeing the doctor, my mom would let me pick out a soup at Ukrop’s. I was a strange seven year-old who watched the news and politely requested that my mother leave the beef out of her famous beef stew and add more carrots because I had heard that red meat was bad for the health, and carrots promoted eye health. I think my mom wrote me off as a nutter right then. Anyway, I did love their beef chili, all tangy and spicy, but the vegetable chili was out of this world. Flavor AND extra vegetables?!? It was this healthfoodie-in-the-making’s union of perfection at the ripe age of seven.
I think I have tried to recapture that perfect flavor with every pot of veggie chili I make. The succulent lentils, the plump, dark red, kidney beans, the perfectly cooked black beans, the sauteed onions and green peppers, the tangy tomato, and sweet corn of the Ukrop’s veggie chili will always be embedded in my memory. Tonight, I am enjoying my version with cute, little whole wheat cornbread bites, fat free sour cream (I also love fat free Fage on it, too), my homemade pickled jalapeños, light shredded cheese, and plenty of sriracha chili sauce. Aww, man, the cornbread at Ukrop’s was like cake – it was so good!
Stereotype Rebel 