Pumpkin chili

Occasionally I get brave and decide I have to try something that is outside of my comfort zone. This recipe certainly qualified. I mean, who normally puts pumpkin in their chili? Certainly not me. It sounded interesting to me, so I had to try it. I adapted a recipe a bit because I wasn't using the crock pot (but I will give those directions as well). I was going to, but I just ran out of time.

ingredients:

1 onion; chopped (this was actually too much for my family, so if you love onion, keep this amount..if you don't.. cut it at least in half.)
3 cloves of garlic; minced (I didn't have garlic, so I used about 1/2 teaspoon of dried minced garlic).
2 cups chicken broth (I used a can of swansons)
2 cans of black beans, drained and rinsed
1 lb ground beef
1-15 ounce can of pumpkin
(2) 14 ounce cans of diced tomatoes. (I can't come anywhere close to this amount as I have `family that doesn't like tomatoes.)
1 tsp dried parsley ( used dried flat leaf parsley)
1 tsp oregano
1 1/2 tsp of cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder (I used crushed red pepper)


cook the onion and beef until the onion and burger are done. (I added teh garlic right away too, but the actual directions say to wait. add it and then cook for one minute) If you are doing a crockpot variety, put the meat mixture into the crockpot and remaining ingredients and cook on low for 5-6 hours.
I just left it in the pot, added the remaining ingredients and simmered it for about a half an hour to an hour.

I made this with copycat red lobster biscuits (already blogged about in here). This was a hit, with the exception that it had too many onions, and not enough spice for some of my family.

I adapted this recipe from www.lynnskitchenadventures.com