A major football watching day. Suzette set the menu in the morning with her comment, “I am thinking about Texas Chili.” We checked our pantry and found the only thing we were missing was ground beef.
So after I ate Lax and bagels and went to Tricore to do a urine test to check my ketone levels, drove to Smith’s. To my surprise Smith’s was offering a5lb. log of ground beef for $9.90. I was even more surprised to discover that Smith’s was blowing out Thanksgiving Vegetables for $1.00 per bag. Most bags contained more than 1 lb. of produce, such as two artichokes that had a regular price of $1.99 each. I bought parsnips, zucchini, yellow squash, and eggplants, besides the artichokes. I realized I now had all the ingredients for Ratatouille except fresh tomatoes. Smith’s was offering vine ripe tomato stems for $1.48, so I bought about six and six more sweet potatoes for $.50/lb.
When I got home we heated Bobby Flay Chicken, Potato Medley, and Green Beans for lunch and watched some soccer and football and made the Texas chili.
Texas Chili
3 lb. ground beef
2 large onions
I large can of crushed tomatoes
10 cloves of garlic
2 T. Chili blend of spices
2 T. NM Chimayo mild red chili
2 T. Ground Cumin
1 T. Ground Coriander
1 oz. of dried Mexican oregano
Salt and pepper
84 oz. of beans and garbanzos
The goal is to have about equal parts beans, meat, and tomatoes and about ½ of that quantity of onion
and then season the chili to taste with the spices. We usually cook the chili three to four hours, although we tasted it often during the cooking process.
Around 4:00 after a quick bowl of chili we drove to Costco to buy beer since we had run out.
Suzette noticed that Costco was blowing out its Thanksgiving turkeys by giving an instant rebate of $15.00 per turkey. She bought the last 8 17-19 lb. tom turkeys for less than $5.00 each. We bought a mixed case of Modelo beer, some Swiss Gruyere cheese, and a few other items.
We returned home just before the 6:00 p.m. kickoff of the TCU v. OSC game. Suzette put several beers in the freezer to chill and we re-heated the chili.
Suzette wanted to make cornbread, so I fetched the cornmeal and Suzette went to the basement to fetch the cornbread pans. She followed the recipe on the box and soon was baking the cornbread in the oven. One cornbread pan was shaped as seashells and the other as ears of corn. The cornbread baked in about fifteen minutes.
Willy came by at 7:00 just as we were serving ourselves and joined us for dinner. We slathered the cornbread with butter and honey and enjoyed our dinner as we cheered TCU to victory.
We also added water to the turkey bones and simmered it to make turkey broth.
Texas Chili is a really healthy dish in my opinion and one we crave as the temperature falls in early winter. It is especially good for long days of football watching, as each can fill a bowl whenever they wish and the chili slow cooks to perfection.
Bon Appetit
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