this is mostly about food

today i bought a tagine
i hadn't really planned to but
it was cheap
it was calling my name
and i thought i could use it for
making recipes from a book which i don't think i've mentioned:

olive trees and honey:
a treasury of vegetarian recipes from jewish communities around the world

i've had it for almost a year
and i've read most of it
but
i haven't really used it

it was a really romantic notion
my buying it
because i wasn't so much thinking of feeding myself
as our imaginary family
but
you know
i'm all about the legumes
so it's not a very eastern european fanatasy shabbat
hence
the tagine


right now, however, i'm focused on the chili

i decided that chili is somehow essentially tomato-y
so i am marinating sundried tomatos overnight
in olive oil, pickled jalapeno juice, and bar-b-que sauce
and i chopped up some dried shitakes
which i'm sort of marinating
but with just a small amount of truffle and toasted sesame oils
as well as sea salt and dulce
i don't think i have enough of that
mushrooms are my go to meaty thing
but i'm going for texture too
i'm just not sure of mushroom - bean interaction
i'm very uncertain that this will work

traditionally
vegetarian chili uses either fake ground beef
or tempeh
neither of which i want to use, particularly
i am hesitant to go with grains
though they might work for texture

i really hope i do not mess up my beans
although
i mean
i'm using slightly less than half of them


fingers crossed