A Delicious Riddle

What do you get when you combine this...


With one of these...


And a little of this...?


That's right, ladies and gentlemen. You get... the Pizza Chili Dog.


Okay, so that was a crappy riddle. But still! Behold it in its grossness and glory. Try this at home, kids. But for goodness' sake, make sure you have a tarp down before you try to eat it.


Also, eating this monstrosity first thing in the morning is ill-advised. Just sayin'.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go lie down for a little while.

Lazy Chili

It's been a lazy couple of weeks, cooking-wise. Been the same ol' same ol' - roasted chicken thighs that I tried to throw on the grill but I forgot they were coated in oil so they caught on fire, take out food from all sorts of places around the 'hood, and other such forgettable items. Like I said, I've been lazy.

So when I woke up today and said I wanted chili, I was determined to take the laziest route possible. Luckily, I've been making chili in a number of different variations to be able to pick out my basic ingredients from the store while blindfolded, asleep, and shot in the leg three times. Don't ask me how I found that out, but it's fact.


What makes this chili so lazy, you ask? I'll tell you. It's the lazy cook's best friend.


The food processor. Really, the people I know who have these things (myself included) don't use it nearly often enough. The concept is very simple - any chopping, shredding, or blending you want to do, you can just toss it into the food processor and get it done with a flick of the switch. Heck, it makes all that beef look like this:


And it takes those unwieldy vegetables and chipotles in adobo and turns them into this:


Yeah, sorry about the fuzziness on that one. Still working on how to use the girlfriend's camera. But that's all she wrote, folks. Chili's one of those things that you can just toss all your ingredients into a pot, clamp a lid on, and simmer for an hour and you've got a pot of blazing-hot, tasty, tomatoey love.


It's the perfect lazy food - it goes on forever. I'm fully planning on eating that pot of chili for the next few days (sorry, girlfriend), be it in a bowl, topped with a little cheese and the ubiquitous tater tots...


Or just slathered on a bacon-wrapped hot dog and sprinkled with those lovely, thank-God-they're-back-in-season Vidalia onions.


Mmm. Oh, hey, that reminds me - Vidalias are in season! Gotta think up something to do with those... Whaddya think, folks? Soup, maybe? Or should I think up something that involves the grill, perhaps? Decisions, decisions...

Chili Verde

Something unusual happened today. I walked into the Key Foods across the street, strolled into their produce section, and came across some fine-looking jalapenos. I know to some of you, that doesn't sound all that impressive. But considering that the average pepper that comes out of that train wreck of a supermarket looks like a Martian's scrotum, I was pretty excited. I picked up a bunch of them and scurried home, post-haste.

But what to do with these things? I rolled around ideas while snagging all the layabout vegetation I had stocked up. All together, they painted a pretty picture.


As I disassembled them, my thoughts turned to my buddy Paul, and how he had made a chicken chili earlier in the week. Now, I've made chili. I've made a lot of chili in my day. But for some reason, I had never gotten around to making a chicken chili. In fact, I didn't really know how to make a chicken chili. Luckily, the old chili principle still held - throw a bunch of stuff into a pot and let it simmer. The veggies went on the stovetop:


And I popped across the street once more to snag a can of beans and some chicken broth. The thought had occurred to use beer instead of broth, but I figured I'd play it a little closer to the book the first time around. Non-veggie team, assemble!


The rest of the process really wasn't that complicated. I spiced the vegetation, stirred in the broth, and let it simmer for half an hour while I diced and browned the chicken. Once the veggies were nice and soft, a run in the blender with a wad of parsley left me with a lovely, vibrantly green and just-thick-enough chili base.


Then came the stir-ins.

chickenchickenchicken


beansbeansbeans


Back to the stove for another half an hour, just to get the flavors to meld, and the chili was ready to eat.


Mmm. A wad of shredded Muenster and a couple of tortilla chips. That's how chili is done. Chalk another recipe up for mental storage; this one's a keeper. Maybe next time, a box of corn should get thrown in there, too...