Cooking Chili on a chilly day

I try to make a ritual of cooking chili at least once in the winter time, so today was the day. The weather report called for rain the next day even though it was sunny this morning.

I’d stocked up my ingredients of dark red kidney beans, onions, ground beef; stew beef chunks, stewed tomatoes, beef broth and lots of hot.

Still I had to return to the Tummy Temple since I had depleted some of my medicine stock (never buy more than you need) and got another bottle of hot sauce. Also restocked the blueberries, peanuts and ‘no waste’ seed for my critters.

The weather was getting chilly so after feeding the family I waited for the participants to partake at the buffet and check the nonsense on the social media network.

Suddenly there was lots of noise but no action.

Walking outside the blue jay crew pointed out the big hawk next door. A couple of hand claps and he flew away and all was right in the yard. Good job guys.

Closing down the outside operation and retiring inside I prepare the daily meal.

Last year I tried this experiment. I follow the directions of a long forgotten recipe but there were too many ingredients. They filled up my slow cooker and my big pot and spilled over into a smaller pot. After 8 hours it was tasty but after two weeks of chili, that was enough.

I also had added parsley to the pot because I had it in the cupboard. The greenery sank to the bottom and bunk into the pot. I’m still trying to scrub it out.

This year I bought one of those Dutch ovens made of cast iron. The sucker is really heavy so I wonder how I ever got it home.

Grill the beef and pour in the stock, cut up the onions with a few tears and still all the fingers, put on the lid and start the simmer.

The house smells good and the windows are fogging up. Every 30 minutes I go in and give it a stir and everything is melting down into next week’s dinner.

I won’t report if it is not delicious but I’m getting hungry now.