I made Sweet Potato Chili

Ok this is really weird. First there were two acorn squash dishes. Now, without even having read Laura's post, I made sweet potato chili with the intention of posting about it. Then I open up the blog to see she has just made sweet potato quesadillas! Crazy. Not to mention that almost all of our dishes have been orange: butternut squash, acorn squash, apricot cookies, and now sweet potatoes. I guess you just crave warmly colored food in cold weather.
Anyway, I've made sweet potato chili many times before, and this recipe is my own. The secret is in the sweetness of the potatoes in combination with smokiness of both fire-roasted tomatoes and chipotle.

Sweet Potato Chili

Ingredients:
Some olive oil. Maybe 1/4 cup.
5 sweet potatoes, skinned and sliced into half-medallions
3 bell peppers of varying colors
2 yellow onions, coarsely chopped
1 carrot, skinned and thinly sliced
2 cans beans (I've used a pinto/kidney/black bean combo... but just black beans would be good. Or black and pinto.)
1/4 cup vegetable broth
1 cup chopped canned chipotle peppers in adobe sauce (these can hard to chop because they're messy and soft. I used scissors and then scoop out the sauce from the can. And of course, use less or more depending on how much heat you want.)
1 can yellow corn
1 28 oz can fire roasted tomatoes, broken apart, with juices
1 package seitan
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp chili powder
2 tsp cayenne
salt
pepper

Any/all of the following for garnish:
Sour cream or plain yogurt
chives
black olives
sliced radishes
shredded cheese
chopped avocado

Heat a tablespoon or two of oil in the bottom of a large pot. Add two cloves garlic and one of the onions. Cook until translucent. Add sweet potatoes, carrot and broth. Cover, and cook until potatoes can be broken apart easily with a wooden spoon.
If you have a very big frying pan, you can combine the next two steps. Otherwise, follow as written because the seitan really needs contact with the pan to get brown. In a frying pan, saute the peppers until browned. In another frying pan, heat some oil, add the remaining garlic and onion, and when onion is browned, tear the seitan into little chunks and toss that in. Pour the juice from the package in too. Saute until seitan is browned.
Add peppers, onions, seitan and all other ingredients into the pot with the sweet potatoes and carrots. Break apart the canned tomatoes as you add them. Cook for a while, until consistency is thick enough.

Makes maybe 6-8 servings. Really hits the spot on a cold night.