3000 miles 'til dinner.

Original MIL Mission #46: Chili with Dark Winter Ale

Yay, cowboy food! Hearty and warming. Not quite warming enough to melt the perpetual dirty new york snow drifts that have been hanging out on the sidewalks for like ever. But warming nonetheless!

The fixin’s. (please ignore bottle of veuve clicquot. cowboys don’t dig on champagne.)

♥HOW I MADE IT.♥

I chose speckled little pinto beans for this pot ‘O chili. Because they’re small and small things are cuter. I soaked them overnight with the intention of throwing everything in the crockpot the next morning. But I’ve been looking pretty winter-busted lately and apparently needed my beauty sleep because I slept in and had to skip it. I just let the beans continue to soak all day, too. 

All the better to digest you with, my dear.

I strained my beans. Cute beans!

Then threw my onion, chili and garlic into my BRANDNEWFOODPROCESSOR. Because trusty old Arthur the Cuisinart turned out to be not so trusty. MIL told me that I could replace all the broken bits. Which maybe I could have. But then…I didn’t. But I’m sure she’ll never find out. She doesn’t read this blog, right? RIGHT? (sorry, MIL)

I also made this chili with turkey because it matched the beans better. And it was fashion week and matching is chic! I browned and ground my turkey, once again in my new food processor. Chic turkey!

Like I said, cowboy’s probably don’t drink champagne around the campfire. But they do like beer. I had a bottle of pumpkin beer leftover from the holidays, so I rolled the flavor dice.

Everything, into the crockpot! Beer party time.

I cooked the chili on low all night and kept our bedroom door open so as not to induce strange chili dreams.

When we woke up, we were greeted with this. We were tempted to make some chili eggs (gross?). But instead, I cooled off the pot, threw on the lid and refrigerated the chili until dinnertime.

Smell ya later, chili.

♥MIL MISSION #46: ACCOMPLISHED.♥

I had some chives in the fridge so I made some chive-y sour cream, grated some cheese and applied both. Generously.

Now, we usually serve chili with corn bread. The really classy Jiffy kind from the box. But MIL once told me about a friend of hers whose family has a chili and cinnamon bun night. So, yeah. We had to.

♥PLATE IT, ATE IT, GRADED IT.♥

scale: 0 (not at all) to 5 (very)

Cupboard to table time: 30 min. and 1 night

Difficulty: 1.5

Deliciousness: 5 (just a perfect bowl of chili. good one, MIL.)

Impressed Husband factor: 5 (Loved. And he said “once you go cinnamon roll, you never go back” or something to that effect. The man is carbcrazy.) 

Leftover-friendly: 5+ (in freezer for future chili and cinnamon roll nights!)

(posted by jessica)