I think I am cooked out for this week. Along with my weekly menu I have been making dishes for Mother’s Day with John’s help. We are having the whole gang over here on Sunday for a cookout so we’ve been busy with endless trips to the grocery store, planting plants and flowers in our yard, and general straightening up.

However, back to Thursday and our new recipe. This vegan chili has black beans, kidney beans, and red lentils as well as the usual array of mild and spicy peppers, onions, tomatoes, and spices. It calls for smoky sweet paprika which I could not find in my pantry (found it today) so I used a little chipotle powder in addition to regular paprika. I got the recipe from the Washington Post where it is available online. At the end of the stovetop instructions it said you could alternatively dump everything into a slow cooker and cook it on high for 3 hours. Since we had a ton of other stuff to do we stuck the ingredients in the slow cooker and let it rip (slowly).

Red lentil chili garnished with fresh tomatoes and green onions

Unfortunately our slow cooker only seems to know “high.” When we turned it down to “keep warm” it just kept perking along on high. Consequently the chili was a little dried out. I know the red lentils are in there but we could not discern their flavor.  If we make this again I think we should use the stove top method and substitute brown lentils.