It’s officially Fall, and Harvest Season!
While we don’t grain farm ourselves, we do help Jesse’s Dad with grain harvest every year.
Jesse spends some long days in the combine so my role is to be the person that keeps all the other parts of life rolling while he’s away. I also try to feed them decent meals so they don’t live on fast food or gas station fried chicken.
So for us, Fall means we are looking for quick and warm meals. Soups, chili, and skillet meals are some of our favorites! I also have to get creative with meals that can be transported to the field and can be served out of the back of my SUV. It’s a glamorous life we live friends!
Here are a few of the meals I have planned for us this month. Hopefully they inspire some delicious meals for your family too!
Classic Chili - my super non-fancy recipe is below!
Classic Simple Chili
This feeds a crowd, so feel free to cut the recipe in half or freeze the leftovers for easy meals later! I also keep our chili fairly mild since I’m feeding tiny humans, but go crazy with hot peppers and more spice if that’s what your family is into.
One more note - chili is so forgiving so you can easily change up the ingredients. We will sometimes use pork sausage instead of ground beef, I’ve made it using leftover shredded beef, all different kinds of beans, leave out the peppers if you don’t have any, add chili sauce or worchestershire for extra flavor, it’s delicious no matter what!
2 lbs Grass Powered Ground Beef
1 onion diced
1-2 bell or poblano peppers diced, add spicy peppers if you want more heat!
2 cloves garlic diced
1 container Tomato Juice or V8 Juice
2 cans diced tomatoes or the kind with chilis
2-3 cans or around .5lb rehydrated dry beans - chili beans, kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans, any of them work!
I usually add a generous few pinches of our Farmstead Seasoning, plus around 2 Tbsp of chili powder to our chili, but any combo of salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper will add excellent flavor. Just don’t get too wild with the spices until you taste it!
Toppings - diced onions, shredded cheese, sour cream, avocados, crackers, jalapeno slices, anything goes! We also like to serve chili with freshly baked cornbread.
Cook diced onion, peppers and ground beef in a dutch oven or soup pot.
Once they are close to done, add the garlic to sautee for a few minutes.
Add in the container of tomato juice, diced tomatoes, and beans. Add some of your spices, but don’t get too crazy with them yet!
Let simmer for around 20 minutes, or longer to really let the flavors mesh. Taste and adjust seasonings.
Serve with freshly baked cornbread and all your favorite toppings!
Quick Tips - most recipes are extremely forgiving if you want to swap out an ingredient or type of meat cut. When I make the stuffed butternut squash recipe above I’ll use our chicken sausage. Any flavor of pork sausage would work great too in place of the Italian sausage.
Any greens called for in a recipe, like Kale, you can substitute any other winter greens like Swiss Chard or Spinach.
Homemade chicken broth can also take the place of any store bought broth called for in a recipe. It has a mild flavor and works anywhere!
I also added more recipes to our Monthly Meat Shares Pinterest Board you can find here. There’s a fig, pistachio and goat cheese stuffed chicken breast recipe I saved there that I really hope I’ll have time to make for a “fancy” dinner one evening soon too. It looks so good!
I hope you enjoy many wonderful meals this month!!