Chili, Part I

I promise you that this will not become a food blog. There are many excellent food blogs (read: people who do nothing but cook, eat and type) out there. I don't cook enough to be one of those people. Honestly, we eat Chef B at least 3 days a week.

Today, however, is the chili contest at work. Woo Hoo! I love chili. Well, at least, I love my mother's version of chili. When I was a child, my sisters and I got to eat whatever we wanted on our birthdays. It was the one day a year that we got to pick the meal. My middle sister always picked lasagna (what she considers lasagna; she hates ricotta cheese). My youngest sister picked hot dogs and macaroni cheese or pizza. She still picks it, actually, nearly every day.

I, on the other hand, had a much more refined palate. Corn dogs and chili. Yep, you read it right. I LOVE corn dogs. Don't ask me why, but I've never been a fan of the white bun. Fair corn dogs are the best because the cornbread is nice and crispy and the dog is nice a steamy. When I was a kid, I'd squirt ketchup on my plate in a big pile and then I'd put mustard on top and mix it around like I was Degas. Now, I eat them plain.

I don't have my mother's recipe for chili. I know that she used tomato sauce that she canned during the summer, as well as kidney beans and meat and a few other goodies. I hated canning season, and for the longest time, tomatoes: the kitchen always smelled like a tomato exploded (and, if the burner was left too high, it usually had). My aunt would give us a bushel of tomatoes and my mother would blanch them and peel them and then pulverize them through her old-fashioned, hand-operated meat grinder. That was the fun part: watching the big, juicy tomatoes go in and a mess of seeds and juice and tomato meat come out. Mom made spaghetti sauce and tomato sauce (there may not have been a difference) and salsa, and we ate it all throughout the winter in various forms. One year she burned the spaghetti sauce . And we at it all throughout the winter in various forms. That was a bad winter.

So now it is 4:51am EST and I am without my mother's chili recipe. Which may not be a bad thing since this is supposed to be "professional chili" without beans (do real people eat chili without beans, seriously?). I've scoured the internet for decent chili recipes and then manipulated them to be my own, based on the ingredients that I can work with and have available (we are shopping at Winn Dixie, not Fresh Market).

Part I is complete and simmering on the stove for a couple of hours. Once it has simmered I'll add in the rest of the ingredients. At least, that is the plan. If it turns out good you can have the recipe.