Vegan Chili Beans & Joanna's Cornbread

Today's lunch is something that you've seen me bring before, but this time there IS something just a little bit different. In fact, today's lunch was pretty much designed around one of the side items, and that's the cornbread muffin. Joanna's Cornbread Muffin, to be exact. I signed up to be one of Joanna's recipe testers for her new cookbook, and while I haven't tested as many recipes as I would have liked to by this point, the few things that I have made have been absolutely delicious. In case you don't know, Joanna is "joannalovesyou" over at the Post Punk Kitchen message boards. And I can already tell you that her cookbook is going to be awesome, so you might as well just plan on ordering it right now when it comes out around June or so. Her recipes are really, really good. And I mean GOOD.

You might remember me lamenting over cornbread in previous blog posts. It seemed like I never could get my vegan cornbread moist enough, and the last thing I tried, which worked pretty well, was adding some ground flax seed to the mix. Well, while browsing through Joanna's tester recipes this week, I stumbled upon her recipe for cornbread muffins. They were really more like Mexican Cornbread since they contained Bell Peppers, Hot Peppers and Fresh Corn. The thing I found most interesting about them, was the fact that there was NO FAT in the recipe. They didn't call for adding any oil or margarine like most cornbread recipes do. She had a pic posted, which looked delicious, and I knew her other recipe that I had tried was delicious, so I made the things. All I can say is WOW! These are the most delicious cornbread muffins I have had since I became vegan. They are really moist and extremely tasty. These are DEFINITELY what I am making whenever I make cornbread in the future. The fact that they didn't have any added fat also meant that they're good for my diet.

To go with the cornbread (this seems so funny, basing a whole meal around a side item) I made some Vegan Chili Beans. They're just the usual Chili Beans that I make which consist of a can of Kidney Beans, a can of Chili Beans and a package of Chili Seasoning, all just Kroger brand. I also like to add in some TVP to help make it "meatier". Oh, and I almost forgot, I also grilled up some onion in a skillet and threw in there. It's really starting to warm up around here, so there might not be too many more opportunities to enjoy some hot chili beans on a cold day.

I also sliced up the last Yve's Zesty Italian Brat that I had left and stirred it up in some Sauerkraut. I don't really care too much for Sauerkraut by itself, but if you put enough faux meat in it, then I like it. As I said in the previous post, these Brats are really good and I definitely plan on consuming quite a few of them this Summer via the grill.

And finally, for dessert, I just threw in a Cashew Cookie Larabar. I've slacked off on bringing the Larabars lately, but believe me, I am still a full-fledged addict. I normally eat one every morning for breakfast, and I like them for snacks too. They're so tasty and they're just so dang convenient.

So that does it for Friday's lunch. I got my walk in today, so, for the first time since starting this weight loss thing, I finally got my whole 5 days of exercise in this week. Hopefully the scale will reward me when I report in on Monday.

Thanks for checking in today. See everybody on Monday!

Have a great weekend!