Bison and Parsnip Chili

I had to make a pretty quick dinner tonight because we were out all day in town so luckily the day before I stocked up on a ton of wonderful food options at Costco, and I am incredibly thankful to be able to shop there as they really have some great choices.  I will come up with another post to list some great items to stock up on if you shop there, this can really help you to navigate away from the less than desirable foods they sell in bulk, I mean unless you enjoy a box of 100+ Twix candy bars calling out your name from the pantry all day long.  Costco can be an awesome place to shop for whole food options...you just have to know what to look for and "think outside the box" ;)  Tonight I just wanted to whip up a meal in one pot so we had less dishes to do and I could spend more time blogging and working on some upgrading of the blog!  I am super excited for the current project I am working on and will share in time when I get things up and running, for now just know that I plan to be a ton more active on here, pushing out new content far more frequently. 

This chili recipe is a spin off of my Bison and Sweet Potato Chili, I just worked with what I had on hand and tweaked a few things to give a different flavor.  I will have to toot my own horn because wow, this chili was amazing!!!  My little men and the big man loved it, this is awesome, my goal is to have everyone in the house eating whole foods and little to no processed stuff, and my little people have been the hardest!!  Right now my oldest is visiting her grandparents and I have made it a mission to get rid of 99% of the crap food in my pantry at the moment.  So the fact that this chili won them over is a victory for this mommy!  I will be adding this into the regular rotation for sure and I hope you all try it and enjoy it just the same.  Please don't be scared of the parsnips...I am not a fan of parsnips and worried that my kids would completely hate this because of them, but my craftiness in dicing everything very small was genius...they didn't even know what it was, they thought they were potatoes....I did later tell them that it was parsnips and explained what they are and what they look like (big white carrots essentially), so in the end I felt pretty good about myself and the fact that they not only ate it, but were introduced to a new food in a pleasant way...and we have enough leftovers for all of us to have lunch tomorrow.  So toot...toot goes the awesome horn !  Enjoy

Ingredients:

• 1-2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 lb. ground bison meat or ground beef (bison just has a richer taste to it)
• 1/2 yellow onion (diced)
• 1 large parsnip (peeled, and diced into small pieces)
• 2-3 carrots (peeled and diced into small pieces)
• 1 yellow bell pepper, diced
• 1-28 oz can of diced tomatoes
• 2 cups of vegetable stock
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper (more if you desire spicier)
• 1.5 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 2 cups of kale chopped into small pieces

Method

Have all of the veggies peeled and diced prior to heating up the pot with oil.  Heat 1-2 tbsp of olive oil in a large pot, when it is good and hot add the diced onion.  Saute the onion until translucent, then add in the ground bison.  Brown the bison, while it is browning you can throw in the parsnips and carrots and let them soften up during the browning process.  After the meet is browned add in the yellow bell pepper and can of tomatoes.  Stir everything together, then add the vegetable stock and all of the spices.  Bring to a boil then simmer for about 10-15 min until the flavors have enough time to merge together nicely.  At the very end of this pretty much right before serving, toss in the chopped kale and give it a good stir, then ladle out the chili into bowls and if desired top with a bit of "Wholly Guacamole,"  another awesome Costco find! Enjoy and please leave me feedback if you liked it!!