On Tuesday I was put in charge of dinner. I decided to make a big pot of chili. I was pretty satisfied with the results. Just from the sheer volume of what I made, I cheerfully thought that it’d last a good while. On Wednesday I wasn’t in the mood to cook something new for lunch so I had some of the chili. It’s the type of food that really does get better the day after, you know? That evening, my family wasn’t in the mood to cook, so we settled on eating the chili. Ugh. Yeah, it was still good, but I was hitting overload. I had originally planned on Tuesday on bringing some of it to work for lunch today, but after 3 of 4 meals being chili I rightly thought it was time to give it a rest.

Makes me wonder what I’m going to do when I’m on my own. I can’t cook large portions unless I want the servings to last for a month. And while chili does improve the day after, after a week (refrigerated!) it’s just not the same. At the same time, it’s a lot more difficult to cook some of these meals on a small scale. I suppose I’m just going to make a habit of inviting friends over to eat.

Anyway, here’s a really rough recipe. I don’t claim to know what I’m doing in great detail. So…if this fails for you, I apologize! Hopefully I didn’t leave anything out.

• Sauté a couple of minced cloves of garlic and a chopped up onion on medium heat with a tablespoon or two of oil. Cook until onions sweat.
• Add a package of extra lean ground beef. Turn up the heat to medium high. Make sure you break up the meat clumps so that you won’t get really large meatballs. Stir often. Cook until beef is brown. If you used extra lean meat you shouldn’t have to drain off any fat.
• Add a can of stewed tomatoes. Add a cup of water or so for volume. Turn the heat down to medium. Stir. Let it simmer.
• Add a diced carrot, 2 diced stalks of celery, and a diced green pepper. Cook until these vegetables aren’t too hard.
• Open a can of red kidney beans. Rinse the suckers in a colander because they often come covered in this ooze that doesn’t taste all that great. Add the beans to the pot.
• Open a can of other “chili” type beans (that aren’t “chili” just yet). Add these to the pot. Yeah, kind of cheating, but no one will care. Let the whole thing simmer until the kidney beans aren’t that hard anymore.
• It’ll probably be too liquidy at this point, so add a bit of tomato paste to thicken it up. If you have no tomato paste, consider some Prego or other thick spaghetti sauce. If it’s still runny, let it simmer for a while to let the liquid dry out a little bit. As well, the starchiness of the beans should help thicken things.
• Add salt, pepper, chili powder, cayenne pepper, maybe a little sugar, and cumin. Cumin gives it that distinct kick. I don’t like it overly spicy, so I go easy on the chili powder and cayenne. I add just enough of those to have a bit of bite. I also add a little bit of MSG. Keep tasting and adjusting according to taste.

I think that’s it. Good luck.