A Good Bowl of Chili

Our version of Chili

This morning it was a bit rainy out and the perfect weather for making a big pot of home made chili or maybe chicken soup.

Tonite we made our version of chili

Ingredients
1 lb of ground beef
1/2 onion chopped/diced
3-4 cloves of garlic chopped
1 can of diced stewed tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
1 can chili beans
1 can black beans
1 can tamales
1 Tbsp cummin (or add to taste)
1 Tbsp chili powder (or add to taste)

Directions
Brown and chop up the ground beef, add onions and cook til softened, add garlic and cook about 2 minutes. Add all canned items except tamales and add all seasonings. Cook about 20 minutes, cut the tamales into 1" pieces and add and stir, be sure not to over stir and disintegrate the tamales. Server hot with shredded cheddar cheese and either crackers or corn bread

Enjoy!

A mixed meal

Free form cooking (aka winging it)

This dinner menu was thrown together at the last minute but it worked out great. The combination of flavors blended with the many different food textures worked out better then we planned.

I don't have all the recipes for these items but will make sure I include those, along with photos to show what I'm writing about in the future. IMO, food is an art and sometimes it looks very good and photogenic (heh, did I just write that?)

Tonite it was grilled baja-citrus chicken breasts, made with a marinade that soaked into the chicken overnight. I grilled them for about 20 minutes. The marinade was by grill-mates purchased at the store, its a great mix of just the right spices, mix it with oil oil and some water, put it in a zip lock bag with the chicken overnight and voila, its fantastic. Grill-mates also has other flavor mixes too (I'll have to list them here in the future). Look for them at your local store. (hey can I get paid for these kind of endorsements? I wish)

For our appetizer of sorts, I sliced fresh zucchini from our garden, fresh heirloom tomatoes from the Folsom Farmers Market and a red onion and put them in a bowl with a mixture of white vinegar, balsamic vinegar, salt and garlic powder. I tossed it all and put it in the fridge to chill.

Ronda made the side dish which was spectacular, it was fried corn cakes made out of fresh cut corn on the cob that we picked up at last weekend's Folsom Farmers Market. (I'll have to find the recipe and post it)

The combination of the zucchini & tomato salad with the spicy chicken and crispy fresh corn cakes was fantastic - this was a dinner to be repeated.

Related subject - Ronda and I have gone out to dinner at many many places all over, over the years, and I dined all around the globe when I used to travel for work. I think we know our food (or I like to think so anyways) and for the most part we know how food should be priced. So sometimes we rate our dishes by putting a price on it - for example, tonite's dinner would be about a $14-18 dollar plate.

Stay tuned for more soon!