Vegetarian Chili Recipe!

I know most people in the family know me as "the meat and potatoes girl", but lately I've been eating less meat. I think being in this nutrition class this quarter has helped me see that meat raises cholestrol, can raise blood pressure, etc. I've been eating less meat for the environmental reasons, but either way if you're vegetarian or not, this chili is pretty darn delicious and cheap to make. I think it only cost me like 6 bucks.

The recipe didn't call for quinoa, but I decided to serve it over quinoa for some extra protein and fiber (and deliciousness)! I cooked it in a separate pot, but since these are the leftovers, the leftover quinoa was just mixed in to conserve fridge space.

• 1 can black or pinto beans, drained
• 1 can kidney beans, drained
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 bell pepper, diced (any color)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 cup vegetable broth
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• dash cayenne pepper (optional)
• dash red pepper flakes (optional)

In a medium or large soup pot, saute the bell pepper (I used a yellow one), onion, and garlic in the olive oil.

Add the tomatoes, vegetable broth, and spices and stir for a few minutes.

Reduce heat to medium low and add the beans. Stir occasionally and let cook for 20 minutes. The longer you let it simmer, the more flavorful it will be. I think I let mine simmer about 30 minutes, but stopped after that because the veggies were getting too squishy for my liking.

If you're making quinoa with it, then you just boil water (2 parts water to 1 part quinoa), and add the quinoa. Turn the heat down a bit and let it bubble until most of the water is gone, then turn the heat down more and put the lid on it until it's soaked up all the water. Or you could serve it with rice, or just eat it as it is! They yellow bell pepper was really tasty. I thought it might be too sweet, but it turned out having a great flavor!

The Times Are A Changin'!

So last Friday I declared my major! That's right, I am officially an English major now! To celebrate, I went home for the weekend to my Dad's house and filled out the FAFSA for next year. It's nice to know that's out of the way for awhile!

The next thing I have to apply for is admission into the Teacher Education Program, which is a lot more extensive (and expensive!) than just filling out a piece of paper and have it signed by the head of the English department! Admission into the T.E.P. involves taking the West-B test, disposition surveys, having my fingerprints taken, getting recommendation forms filled by non-family members, along with a myriad of other things. So this week and next week I'm going to printing out a lot of papers and ferrying them off to various people.

Also last Friday I signed up for Spring quarter classes! I only have one more basic skills requirement to fill, and that's Math 101, so I'm taking Math 101 at 9 in the morning Monday through Friday. The other two classes I'm taking are towards my major, English 302 and English 303. 302 is Introduction to English Studies, basically an introduction to what's expected of an English major and such. 303 is Poetry and Poetics with the same English teacher I had Fall quarter. I'm excited to be taking major classes now. I already know I'm not going to be a mathematician or scientist, so I'm sick of taking those classes.

Kara, Rose, and I are going to have a tour of the duplex we'll be living in next year! I already have so many plans on how I'm going to decorate my room!

Loren and I just got back from a really well-done presentation by a girl who graduated CWU in 2009. She was in Tunisia teaching some classes when all the revolution stuff started happening, and the presentation was basically about her experience there during all the turmoil. She also went into the background of what happened there, so it was really interesting. She graduated as a Sociology major I think, and travels all over the world teaching classes about American Culture to other cultures to broaden understanding between nations. I'd really like to do that someday, but who knows. It was really interesting to hear her perspective on it, especially in light of the events going on in Libya right now. I've been getting most of my info from Al Jazeera.

More snow?

So after a week and a half or so of nice sunny weather and Spring-like rain, it started snowing yesterday afternoon. And when I say snowing, I don't mean the occasional flake, I mean holy crow it's SNOWING! I was at Fred Meyer and walked from my car to the door of the store and I was covered in huge white flakes of snow! Today is going to be a cold one, but it's sunny out!

Here's the street behind our apartments. I love the look of the hills with snow on them!

There's the apartments. Don't they look like little ski condos with the snow? Or maybe I'm just crazy. But either way, it still makes me homesick for Schweitzer and Sun Valley...

Looks like it's going to be a gorgeous day here! Woohoo!


This weekend there's no ski lessons, so instead I'm going to my dad's house to work on the FAFSA for this next school year. A weekend away from Ellensburg will be nice. I love it here, but I miss the West side every now and then too.

Oh, also I dyed my hair! Mostly just to get rid of my 3-inch long roots, a little bit because I was bored with my hair color. So now it's just a tad lighter than my actual hair color and a little more red. I don't know why but every time I dye my hair it ends up much more red than expected. But anyway, enough about that!

Running is going good! I've got my mile time down, and now working on better stamina. That's always been the hard part for me. Some people can just run and run and run, but not me. My legs feel like they could go forever, it's my lungs that give me trouble! Don't know why that is, but maybe with more practice they'll get used to it.

The Weather's A-Changin'

It's starting to get really windy around here, and generally when it gets windy in Ellensburg that means the weather is changing. It's starting to get warmer and rainier, although the wind makes it really cold to walk to class in so we still have to bundle up. Hopefully it will snow in the mountains though, because these last two weekends of ski teaching have been pretty miserable weather-wise. There's patches of dirt and rocks all over and a bunch of unmarked holes that if you're not careful you might ski right into them.

Still been going to the gym, probably won't be up for the Smelt Run. I was thinking perhaps though trying to make it to the Tulip Run in April because I've always wanted to go to the Tulip Festival anyway.

A couple weeks ago we took our first exam in my Nutrition class and I totally thought I did awful on it, but we got our grades back last week and turns out I got an 86%! Much better than I had expected! Our next exam is tomorrow and I studied a lot more this time around, so my grade should be even better. I have no clue what my English grade is, and I have an A in math (duh.). English class has actually been challenging this time around. We're reading some really challenging stuff, or at least I think it's challenging. The last book we read was Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua, which was probably the most difficult thing I've ever read. It's definitely interesting though.