It's officially fall...

I love fall. Hands down, favorite season. First off because it brings the month of October. the best month of the year and not just because my birthday is in October (oh, on Thursday- did I mention that?).
Um, college football and HALLOWEEN are in October. yessssss

Also you can finally put on sweaters w/ jeans and sneakers and hide your belly again (thank you baby jesus), AND you can make delicious stick to your bones fall food.

like chili and cornbread.

So. way back in February an acquaintance- now friend :)- mentioned something about making bomb chili. I asked for the recipe and received an email with directions. It took 8 months, but I finally did it justice. It took some visual inspiration though, I saw what it looked like in their kitchen first today and Moochie & #1 were like, can we make chili too? You bet your ass we can. We went to the grocery store to get....



(ground meat, various beans, tomato sauce, tomato paste, celery, onion, jalapeno, tomato, green pepper, green chili, white pepper (?), cumin, regular pepper, chili powder) and FYI, you really do need a big ass pot. This exact term was used in the directions. This is no lie. biggest pot you have. use it.

*please note- I altered the recipe I received just slightly. Mainly, I did this:

Instead of using 2 lbs of ground beef, I used one pound of ground veal and one pound of ground sirloin. i'm fancy.

and the recipe also called for Frostbite. Back in February I was like- really? c'mon. do you REALLY use this? but today, I saw first hand that yes, indeed Frostbite is used.
I do not have Frostbite. Nor does my local grocery store. But you know what I do have? Sriracha. If you don't already have some, GO BUY IT NOW.

I had to get my mise ready so I chop chop chopped away while the kids waited not so patiently (we were going on a halloween treasure hunt around the block. i know, i told you I was fancy). And then we did some pop'ing and dropping. i.e. i opened what felt like 100 cans and let the kids dump them in the big ass pot.

Recipe called for 2 cans pinto and 2 cans kidney beans. I went off recipe and used 1 of each: pinto, black, cannelini, kidney. and then we put everything else in the pot except for:


meat, onions and green pepper
i let the onions get translucent and the meat cooked about half way. because then we just dumped THAT into the b.a.p. too.
and then we let it simmer away for about an hour while we went on our treasure hunt.
....
we come home and the house smells amazing. the kids aren't impressed and they want corn dogs instead. and butter noodles. shocking.
i sway them only slightly by telling them we are going to make fancy cupcakes. little did they know....

these ingredients would be making cornbread muffins. i'm mean, i know.
so we have cornmeal, bread flour, eggs, whipping cream, salt, baking powder, sugar, shortening and a can of sweet summer corn which I forgot to include. i was hiding it from the kids.
pretty much you just cream the shortening, then add liquids, then dry ingredients and last corn or whatever at the end (i envision bacon as a stellar addition) My friend said that vanilla is a good thing to add. huh.. never would have thought. and I love vanilla. maybe next time...
so, the mix is lumpy. i just plopped it in the muffin cups after letting the kids go nuts w/ the Pam.

15 minutes in the oven at 450.

kids are eating their corndogs and i'm salivating over the chili.
no lie as soon as the timer went off I served myself a bowl so it could cool down and waited TEN torturous minutes while the muffins cooled so I could turn them out w/o breaking them.
i even put Plugra butter on them. i know, i'm disgusting. it was worth it

Here is the recipe...

1 med. onion - diced
1 large green pepper - diced
1 jalapeno pepper - diced - keep seeds in
1/2 cup green chiles - diced (1/2 cup = 4 oz, which is exactly how a can is sold. woot!)
1/4 cup diced celery
2lbs ground beef (any ground meat would do I suppose. I was looking for lean, so you know veal and sirloin worked)
2 med. tomatoes, chopped (I suppose you could use a can here too)
2 29oz cans of tomato sauce
2 15 oz cans kidney beans
2 15 oz cans pinto beans
1 12 oz can tomato paste
4 tablespoons chili powder (I use http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/p-penzeyschilihot.html)
8-10 drops of Frostbite (http://cajohns.com/vmchk/Hot-Sauces/Frostbite-White-Hot-Sauce.html) *i used sriracha instead
2 teaspoons cumin powder
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon white pepper (I just used more black pepper)
1 tablespoon salt
2 cups water

1. brown beef - crumble to pea-sized pieces
2. add diced onions and green pepper to beef while cooking
3. mix all other ingredients in big ass pot.
4. drain beef/onion/pepper and combine into pot.
5. simmer for 3 hours - stirring frequently.

i biffed on the stirring frequently as I left the house for an hour. oops... but i stirred even more frequently upon my arrival. whatever, it was fine. :)