Chilly Chilli Con Carne!

It was very c-o-l-d when I woke up this morning.  0 degrees at 7am and by 9:30am it was only 1 degree. Thankfully by midday the temperature had increased - to a whole 8 degrees! 

Chilli con carne seemed an appropriate dinner choice, given the chilly weather!

I often use my thermal cookers at home, particularly when I know the evening will be busy.  There is a chilli con carne  "recipe" here with a YouTube video to show the method, which is fairly straight-forward.

I didn't actually use that recipe and my ingredients vary depending on what is on hand.   Grated carrot and zucchini are often included but we don't have either at the moment so this time I used:

500g lean mince
1 large onion (chopped)
1 small red capsicum (chopped)
1 large yellow capsicum (chopped)
2-3 sticks celery (chopped)
1 tin diced tomatoes
1 tin red kidney beans
1 tin brown lentils
1/2 cup dried lentils
1 tin water
4 teaspoons beef stock powder
1/3 large jar of tomato paste (approx.)

Before we moved to Victoria, I bought taco seasoning in bulk.  I used the last few teaspoons of that mix today, so added a slurp of sweet chilli sauce also.  There is no evaporation in thermal cooking, so I often add dried legumes to the mix for thickening and extra goodness.

While the meat sauce was bubbling away, I prepared steamed rice in the smaller top pot using the instructions here.  At 10:30am everything was tucked into the outer insulated pot, ready to be revealed much later at dinner time (around 7:00pm). 

My creation was very well received.  The mix easily made eight generous servings.  As well as what was eaten tonight, two serves have been frozen for night-shift dinners and two smaller portions are in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch.