Spicy Chili, Spicy Night

An Italian, a cat and a chef walk into a bar. The bartender said, “What’ll it be?” The Italian said, “Red Wine, from my home country.” The cat said, “2% Milk, on the rocks.” The chef said, “Everything you’ve got. I have a party tonight and the more they drink, the better my food tastes.”

Buh-duh-schhhh….

Ok, so that was lame. Ok, so I made it up. And yes, I know telling jokes is not my forte. But now you’ve seen a glimpse of the real, lame-oid Rebekah. Tah-dah.

This is what happens to your humor if you get up at 5am to start cooking chili. It gets weird, then it gets strange, then it gets bad.

I ended up on bad.

I had a few people (hah!) over to the house this weekend and thought it would be fun to serve up a ton of chili, cornbread muffins and call it a day. I started off with a simple recipe that grew into a complicated mathematical equation in order to serve 60.

Ground Beef-check. 10 Pounds-check. Drain the fat-check.

Open up 26 cans of beans-check.

Consider buying an electric can opener-check.

Chop up 15 yellow onions-check.

Scavenge garden for peppers, chop up, seal in ziplock bags and don’t rub eyes-wish I could say “check” here.

Cook for at least an hour utilizing the capacity of your canners because none of your real pots are big enough. Don’t allow chili to burn on the bottom-again, wish I could say “check”.

Have a nervous breakdown, pour the contents of the chili out of the canners into at least 7 other smaller pots, scrape the burnt beans off of the bottom, scrub pot for at least 30 minutes, taste chili, confirm it doesn’t taste burnt, transfer back into the canners and turn down heat-check.

Make 60 cornbread muffins-check.

Cut up 2 lbs of carrots and 3 celery bunches-check.

Clean house-check.

Have a glass of wine-double check.

Wait for guests to arrive. Enjoy the night-check.

Eat the leftover chili for the next week-check.