Southwestern Corn Stew

This has been a quiet week at work and that’s alright with me, it’s nice to enjoy a little low time before charging into the new year. Time to continue to snap away with our new camera, my poor pets. But I just love the lighting and detail of this shot, the flash on my little camera would have whited her out and given her a serious case of red eye.

And I’m loving the shutter speed for being able to catch him all squinty-eyed mid paw clean.

We’re geeks for this shot, I know and I’m okay with that. But check out the water drip detail. This would have been a blurry mess using my old cam.

Besides being camera obsessed this week, I’m also obsessed with corn and lentils because I’ve been craving them a lot lately. Especially since they’re cheap and easy to cook. I had about a cup left of green lentils to use up and was craving a hot stew after running around in monsoon wind and rain all day. I hit up AllRecipes for a little inspiration and found this highly rated recipe. It’s a little too full of meat and dairy products for my taste, but it looks simple and cheap using mostly cans and probably pretty flavorful considering. So I decided to veganize it utilizing what I had.

Southwestern Corn Stew

• 1 cup dried green lentils
• 16 oz. bag of frozen corn
• 4 cups veggie broth
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3-5 carrots, chopped
• 2 medium zucchinis, chopped
• 5 roma tomatoes, chopped
• 3 tsp. chili powder
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1 tsp. oregano
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne
• 2 tbsp. olive oil

Caramelize onions and garlic in olive oil over medium heat until onions are translucent.

Bring veggie broth and lentils to a boil in large soup pot. Reduce heat and add onion/garlic mixture, tomatoes, corn, carrots, zucchini, chili powder, cumin, oregano and cayenne. Simmer over medium heat for 30 minutes and serve.

Top with Daiya cheddar shreds, fresh chopped cilantro, nutritional yeast, vegan sour cream, hot sauce – whatever looks good. I used Daiya shreds and cilantro because I’m in love with fresh chopped cilantro in bean dishes.

There’s something about the texture and flavor that corn adds to stews and in this case it adds a slight sweetness that blends nicely with spice blend. And thoroughly mixing the Daiya shreds through the dish was quite yummy.

After I threw this together, I realized it a delicious variation of my Lentil Quinoa Chili, more proof that I’m obsessed with lentils and corn. But since I’m now out of lentils, I need to start getting creative with the bags of other dried beans filling my pantry. Which this recipe would work with just about any bean variety – black beans, chickpeas, black eyed peas. And you can use a variety of veggies in it – throw in anything that needs to be used up in place of the zucchini and carrots.