Thursday, October 8, 2009

Baked Cheezly Chili Mac

With fall upon us, a girl's thoughts turn to hot boots, mulled cider, and soups and stews and chilis of course!

Yesterday I had the wonderful idea of making chili. I considered breaking out the bread machine to make some nice crusty bread to go along with it, then I decided to do cornbread and a salad, but I also thought of serving it over rice. So obviously, I didn't really have a plan. I just made chili. Nothing fancy or exotic, just a basic chili with TVP, canned beans, canned tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and gobs of spices.


By the time the chili was ready, I still wasn't sure what else I was going to do, so I went to stare into the pantry, as I so often do. There was a lone bag of fusilli, so I grabbed that and put a pot of water on to boil. When that was nearly done, I mixed the pasta and about two thirds of the chili, grated some nacho Cheezly on top, covered with foil, and put it in the oven on 350 for about 20 minutes. Then I brought the oven up to a low broil and let it have about five minutes sans the foil. Here is what resulted:


Added some roasted green beans--bought directly from Rock Hill Orchard this past weekend--and had a complete meal.

Was it pretty? No. Was it good and oh so easy? Yes!

The other great part of this is there was enough chili left over to use for another meal, whether served in bowls, atop nachos, or made into another casserole. It now lives in my freezer and thanks to my handy dandy label maker, there's no confusion as to what it is and when it was made.

2 comments:

  1. Looks fabulous and what a great idea to mix pasta with it!

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  2. Does Cheezly taste like dairy cheese? It looks just like it.

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