Black Bean Quinoa Chili

Something I forgot to mention yesterday when listing stuff you should stock up on, was quinoa.  Forget all the times you made fun of "those people" who eat kale and quinoa.  It's a great thing to add to your diet, packed with protein.  It doesn't have much flavor on its own, it just takes on the essence of whatever you put with it.  In this case, it serves to make a nice thick chili.

I make this quite often, and have served it to friends (both veggie and meat eaters) with great results! I don't remember where I got the recipe, somewhere on the interweb. 


1 C uncooked quinoa
2 T olive oil
1 T chili powder
2-1/2 t smoked paprika
2 t cumin
1 t chipotle seasoning

1 medium or large sweet potato, diced small
1 large yellow or white onion
1 large red bell pepper
5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped (I use 1 clove.  We're not that much into garlic, so use your own            judgment)
3 C water
1 15-oz can pumpkin puree (Pumpkin puree, NOT pumpkin pie filling.  Big difference, but found in              the same place in the store.)
1 6-oz can tomato paste (I use salt-free, but you do you)
1 T maple syrup or agave
2 T lemon juice (about one lemon's worth)
1/4 C red cooking wine (or just red wine.  I have made it without either, and that's ok too.)
2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained (about 3 cups)

Cook the quinoa according to package directions.  Chop the veggies.  Mix the spices together in a small bowl.

Add the olive oil to a large, lidded saucepan and raise the heat to medium low.  Add the spices, let them bloom in the oil 2-3 minutes.  Splash a little water in if they start to scorch.

Raise the heat to medium and add the diced potato.  Saute until it starts to get tender, adding water little by little as necessary to keep it from burning.  The original recipe said to saute 5 minutes, but I've found it takes a lot longer for them not to end up hard as a rock in the finished chili.  How long?  Don't really know.  Just keep poking them with a fork.  Hard sweet potatoes in your chili are unpleasant.

When they start to get tender, add the garlic and another splash of water, saute another 2-3 minutes.  Add the cooked quinoa and saute about 5 more minutes.  Keep stirring to make sure it doesn't burn, add a little water as necessary.

Stir in the 3 cups of water and everything else.  Put the lid on, lower the heat to a simmer and let everything cook through about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.


So this makes a pretty big pot.  It will last a few days in the fridge, and freezes well.  Another way to use it is with spaghetti squash, like so:

Preheat your oven to 350. Cut small spaghetti squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and slimy junk.  1/2 a small squash should be plenty for a serving.  Rub some olive oil on the cut part, and put them face down on parchment on a baking sheet (or right on the sheet, if you're not lazy like me and don't mind scrubbing).  Bake for maybe 45 minutes (?) until you can easily separate the strands with a fork.  Turn them rightside up, fill with however much chili you think you can handle, sprinkle some grated cheese on the top, and put them back in the oven until the cheese melts.

Stay At Home And Cook With Jane. (what else do you have to do?)

Greetings, Foodies!!  Jane here.  We have not posted in a while, and have not been exploring new places lately for obvious reasons!  We hope you all are safe and well, and enduring this situation as best you can.  We have continued to try and support our favorite local eateries, but that circle is getting smaller and smaller as the crisis gets larger.

So with that in mind, I want to try something a little different here.  With more of you eating in, cooking has become less and less of an optional thing and more of a necessity.  In the coming days/weeks/whatever, I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite recipes with you.  I'm going to try to focus on the ones with inexpensive and/or readily available ingredients, so you can make the most of your limited shopping time and budget.

YES, they will be vegetarian!  "Oh hell no, Jane!"  I can hear you saying. "I can't live on that stuff!  And it's gross!" Well yes, you can, if you do it right.  And no, it's not, if you do it right.  Listen, I'm not trying to make a vegetarian out of anyone.  But meat is expensive, and sometimes lately in short supply.  And you already know how to cook that. My thought was this;  if you have some alternatives to your regular cooking repertoire, you can stretch your meat budget that much further.  Maybe have meat every OTHER night?  Or maybe even serve some veggie food for lunches.  At the very least, it'll be something different!

So I'll be back starting tomorrow with recipes!  First of all, let me list some stuff you can stock up on if you want to join me on this adventure:

Beans - all kinds.  I use mostly black beans, kidneys, lentils (all colors) and chickpeas.  Because I have to watch my sodium, most canned beans are out.  The bagged beans are super easy to use though;  I just cook up a bag at a time, and freeze them in 1-1/2 cup batches, which is about how much is in a can.

Rice - I always use brown rice.  Not as cheap as white, but better for you.  You can get it in Walmart, Price Rite, or wherever.

Veggies - when I go, I just buy a bunch of stuff; zucchini, sweet potatoes, broccoli, peppers, carrots, etc etc etc.  Most stuff can be frozen if you're not going to use it right away.  Some people say buying frozen is better, because it gets frozen immediately after picking, so there's that.

Kale - super cheap and really good for you.  You'll probably have to buy a huge bunch of it, but it freezes well...I just cut off the stems and stuff the leaves in a big freezer bag and pull them out as I need them.

Vegetable stock - I never buy it.  The sodium thing.  Plus, it's really easy to make and freeze.  What I do is take all the leftover trimmings (kale stems, celery tops, carrot peels, pepper stems and seeds, slightly wilted leaves of basically everything) and put them in a gallon freezer bag.  When it's full, I put put it in a big pot of water and boil it.  When cool, I strain it and freeze it in quart bags.  Easy.

Spices/herbs - used most: Cumin, rosemary, smoked paprika, chili powder, basil, oregano, chipotle seasoning, thyme, parsley, dill, sesame seeds, nutritional yeast (don't be afraid, it's not that weird).

Other stuff I use a lot - olive oil, apple cider vinegar, toasted sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, molasses, canned coconut milk, tahini (best place to buy this that I've found is North Side Pockets in North Providence but you can find it in pretty much any grocery store), soy sauce or tamari (I have a recipe for a sodium free substitute I'll share with you at some point)

I'm sure you probably have a lot of this in your cupboard already, and I'm sure there are a lot of things I've left out.  But this is a work in progress!

See you tomorrow!

Pizza King on the Lake

 Average Joe is a pizza connoisseur.  He won't eat pizza just anywhere, he has a few favorites.  And when I met him, he was delighted to introduce me to a place he'd been coming to since the beginning of time, Pizza King in East Killingly, CT.  He said "You're not going to believe this place, the pizza is slammin'! And it's in the middle of the woods, in the middle of NOWHERE!  And it looks just like something out of a Coors silver bullet commercial!"  And he was not lying.  He was not lying about the pizza, either. 

The view from the back deck in the fall

I had heard about this place since I was a teenager.  But growing up in South County, a lot of people get...well, stuck in South County.  There's a weird sort of mentality that precludes you driving more than 10 miles in any direction.  You have to drive all the way out Rt. 6, take a right down a narrow winding road, take a left onto a REALLY narrow road, and up a long dirt driveway to get there. So I'd never been.   The place has apparently been through a lot of changes over the years, but now you can go in anytime Thursday through Sunday and find Buddy holding court and making you feel like you're part of the family.  There's plenty of room for dining; in the winter you can huddle up next to the fireplace if you like (I do), and in the summer you can eat on the deck and marvel at the quiet beauty of the lake in back.

There are loads of options on the menu, but what we usually go with are spinach, feta, tomatoes and mushrooms.  Joe likes chicken on his half.  The pizza is thick and loaded with cheese, they are not shy with their toppings. Absolutely delicious.

Wings are one of the Pizza King specialties.  There are various degrees of hot sauce you can select, and I'm told that if you choose the XXX sauce, it comes with a personal visit to your table from Buddy, who will explain just HOW hot it is and try to talk you out of it.  A full selection of burgers, salads, pasta, grinders and Starlets' famous pies are also available if pizza is not your thing. 

Pizza King seems to be a very popular place for birthday parties.  A lot of the times we've been there on a weekend, there's been a party going on, and Joe says he had his 50th birthday there. 

One of the items on the menu is "a bowl of junk".  In one of my earlier visits, I got a big kick out of this and posted a photo of that menu listing on my facebook page as we were waiting for our pizza.  About 2 minutes later, Buddy came over to our table and explained what a bowl of junk was.  So he clearly pays attention to his facebook page!

So, what's a bowl of junk?  You just have to go to Pizza King and find out for yourself.  It's worth the trip, even from South County.  430 Ledge Road, East Killingly, CT.

Alaina's Ale House

"Pie and Pint Night", someone said to me last summer, "My boyfriend and I go every week, it's great!"  Pie and Pint night?? Never heard of such a thing.  And truly, it shouldn't have taken us so long to go check it out, but we finally made it over to Alaina's Ale House, 343 Kingstown Road in Richmond (at the Beaver River Golf Course).

Alaina's opened up last year, and while my friends raved to me about the food, Joe and I had not managed to work Pie and Pint Night into our schedule until last week.  The forecast had called for snow, but we don't have far to go so we ventured out for a late dinner.  It was coming down pretty hard by the time we got there, so we were the only diners in the place...just a few people at the bar.  Alaina's is not a big place, but it's VERY nice in there, classy like you'd expect at a country club but at the same time, very down-to-earth and the people are very friendly.  We were greeted by the manager, Chris, and the one server on duty (whose name I can't recall and this is why I should write these things right away!)

There were 4 pot pies on the menu, and a limited selection of beers for the deal; Joe chose the chicken pot pie and a pint of Harp.  He said it was the best pot pie he'd ever had, and he's a pot pie fan.  It was a good-sized pie, served in the cast-iron frying pan in which it was cooked, and I could see it was filled with big chunks of white meat and veggies.  I confess I don't care for beer, and as a (mostly) vegetarian I wasn't into the pies, so I went for the sweet potato veggie burger.  I usually stay away from veggie burgers when I eat out, as they tend to be premade/frozen little hockey pucks filled with unidentifiable but colorful chunks.  Not so at Alaina's;  it was a very tasty house-made patty, and a pretty big one at that.  My only suggestion was that it could have come with some sort of hummus or chipotle mayo or something on it; it didn't REALLY need it but I was offered ketchup and while I understand this is not a veggie restaurant, ketchup doesn't really go with a veggie burger in my opinion.  Just my opinion.  But it was really good, and it came with a side.  I wasn't feeling the fries so I went with green beans, which were cooked to perfection, not mushy.

In a rare display of gluttony, we decided to go with dessert.  What got our attention was when our server said "apple crisp with ice cream".  We got one and shared it, which was a good thing (for us) because it was a pretty big serving.  Delicious!

We will be back to Alaina's, there are quite a few things on the menu that we need to try.  They have  live entertainment on the weekends (which in the summer moves out to the back where there is outdoor dining too), as well as karaoke and other fun stuff.  Follow them on Facebook to keep updated!

Zip's Diner

Since our travels today took us up to the wild and uncharted territory known as northeastern Connecticut,  we planned to stop at Zip's Diner, located at Rt. 101 & 12 in Dayville.  We went there once before, but it's not an area we frequent so it's been a while.

 First, let me (Jane) state that we are both big fans of diners in general.  The whole atmosphere is inviting.  And if you are out on a busy day doing lots of errands (which we usually are) and find yourself needing some lunch, you can usually find one within a reasonable distance from wherever you are where you can grab a quick meal that won't break you and is a step up from a fast-food joint.  Having said that, although we love diners, we try to not visit them TOO often because while the food is decent, it's not by any means what you call "healthy". Lots of fried stuff, salty stuff, comfort food. And no matter what you might infer from our reviews, we do eat healthy most of the time.

Anyway, what we've realized is that diner food is pretty much the same everywhere.  Mostly the same stuff on the menu, all pretty good.  You've been to diners, you know the score.  So I'm not going to review the food at Zip's even though it was good (except the frappes, they were exceptional).

What I AM going to review is Zip's itself.  The diner opened in its current location in 1954, and has a long and interesting history.  The place is bright and cheery, and very clean.  It has the added appeal of being open 6AM-9PM every day!  A lot of diners close at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, which is inconvenient because not all of us follow the same schedule.

We were enjoying our frappes and waiting for dinner...it was kind of quiet, a few diners in there...when in walked Paul.  As I said we are not regulars in that area, but apparently Paul is because everyone, from every single employee to several of the patrons, greeted Paul by name as if he was everyone's best friend.  He sat at the counter and was immediately served his coffee just the way he likes it, without even having to ask.  That's the kind of place Zip's is, and it makes you want to be a regular, too.

As far as I'm concerned, though, the real star of the show was Michelle, our server.  She waited on us both times that we've been to Zip's, and she's an absolute ray of sunshine.  I wish everyone who has that job could have her personality.

So yeah, go to Zip's.  It's a fun place and the food won't disappoint.  Ask for Michelle!

Dante's Kitchen

We love our lazy mornings at home, taking our time over coffee and tea and what-have-you, but once in a while we'll go out for breakfast (which usually turns out to be brunch, by the time we get our lazy selves out of the house), and so it was on Valentine's Day.  We'd seen Dante's Kitchen, 315 Main Street, East Greenwich advertised in the area magazines for quite some time, and it was on the list, so....today was the day.

When we got there, it was slammed!  Not really surprising, because East Greenwich seems to be a really hot destination for people who love to eat and no matter where we stop in, there's always a bunch of people who had the same idea.  The atmosphere was very cozy and welcoming, and despite the crowd the wait staff was right on top of things and got to us right away.  French vanilla coffee was our beverage of choice.  Lots of southern-inspired goodness on the menu!  After much consideration, Joe decided on the veggie breakfast burrito, which I also wanted but it contains scrambled eggs, which I can't do.  As there was no scrambled tofu option to replace the eggs,  I went with one of the day's specials, apple-cinnamon pancakes.  Joe was very pleased with the burrito.  It came with a side of home fries, which I DID sample, and even though home fries sound like a simple thing it's worth mentioning that Dante's Kitchen is really good at them.  I've had them overcooked, undercooked, greasy, too much seasoning, etc. etc.  but these were done right.  He also got a side of cheddar grits.  They were good too, I mean grits are grits but the addition of the cheese was an interesting twist.

My pancakes were good, and they (the pancakes themselves, topping notwithstanding) tasted different from anywhere else that I've had them.  I could be wrong but it seemed to me to be a marked lack of salt, which I feel is a VERY good thing. They came with whipped cream and some sort of caramel drizzled on them, so no syrup needed (IMHO). 

Only two things we didn't like; I'll refer back to a post Joe recently made on our Facebook page regarding servers.  When you order food, and the server says, "I love that!" or "Excellent choice" that's ok, but when you're in a crowded little restaurant and you can hear your server saying "Excellent choice" to every single customer he's waiting on, it kind of loses its meaning.  The other thing was that after our server brought our check, he kind of disappeared.  I mean, it WAS really busy in there and he wasn't standing around doing nothing, but it's kind of a pet peeve of both of ours; you were right on top of things taking our order and the food came out pretty quickly, but once we're done we want to go.  And don't you want our table for the next customer?

We liked Dante's Kitchen a lot, and will most likely go back.  The food was very good, and above comments notwithstanding, the service was good too.

Condesa Restaurante Mexicano

We love Mexican food.  Almost too much, if that's possible.  So we kept driving by Condesa, 721 Quaker Lane, West Warwick, AFTER we had already had Mexican somewhere else and saying, "we have to try that place". 

Well we finally made it in, and let's just say we both had mixed feelings.

To start, it's a little more upscale than the Mexican places we usually frequent.  The decor is nice, but I found it a little strange that in a place that is more "upscale" the seating reminds me of a more casual place you'd go to have lunch.  There are no booths, and the tables are situated pretty close to each other; we were seated next to a group of people who were pretty boisterous.  Maybe it's just me (Jane, BTW), but if I'm out to a nice dinner I want to be able to talk without yelling over my neighbors.  And the water tastes like bleach.  Yeah, I know, it's city water and that's the way it comes out the tap, but yuck.

The service was great, no problem there.  Our server brought us a big bowl of chips and four different dips, which was fun.  We each ordered a sangria; he the Classic 9 red, and I got the Peach Ginger.  Both were excellent.  Joe has a thing for tamales, so he got an order of the chicken & poblano.  He described them as "lame".  Could only taste the cornmeal, I guess there wasn't much chicken in there.

For dinner I went with the California burrito.  It was between that and an enchilada that also sounded good, but every time I get an enchilada I regret it.  Something about the wet, slimy tortilla I don't like.  So I went with the burrito, and it came on a plate smothered in sauce.  I understand "burrito"means different things everywhere, so maybe that's on me for not asking.  It was ok, that's the best I can give it.  And for $15, I feel like it should be more than just ok.  What it WAS, though, was enormous.  Two of us could have split it and been full.  Joe went with the Pollo Maya, which came with grilled veggies and chipotle mashed potatoes.  He was really happy with it, and I tasted some too.  Very, very good.  The price was around the same.

The consensus?  We won't be going back.  It's a nice place, but you can get better Mexican for a lot less money at a lot of other places.  I wouldn't say don't go there, it wasn't BAD.  It just wasn't for us.