Why I Don't Write Recipes

Emily is a great cook. She studies cooking and collects recipes like some people collect tchotchkes. I cook, too, but I don't use recipes. Mostly, I don't use recipes because, I reckon, I am a little Dyslexic. I have a hard time following directions from a written form. Always have.

But still, I cook. Usually from taste. I deconstruct what must be in a given dish and then reconstruct it my way. Some food doesn't need a recipe. It is what it is.

Like chili.

I love to make chili. I have made chili since I can remember, always refining and changing things until I get what I want. Well, that's one story anyway, but it's apocryphal. The real reason is it changes from time to time is that I forget what I did in the past.

That ends now, because I just made my second batch of a chili I really like. I want to be able to repeat it in the future. So, I'm going to write a recipe. Why not share it with you, the masses. I mean, it's not like it's the some super secret… it's chili.

Chill Billy's Willy Chili

Ingredients:
2 lbs. ground beef (the cheaper the better)
1 lb.  ground pork (I like mild, because there is plenty of flavor here, but go with hot if you can deal      
                               with the burning ring of fire… you know what I'm talking about)

(Note: If you're the type of person who would have gone to Woodstock wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, you can substitute ground turkey or chicken, but I want you to know that this is a sin against humanity and if you want to each chili without the hearty meats, I suggest having some bullion, instead.)

3 28 oz. cans of petite diced tomatoes
1 12 oz. can of tomato paste
1 15.5 oz. can of light red kidney beans
1 15.5 oz. can of dark red kidney beans
1 15.5 oz. can of cannellini beans
(You can use black beans if you like the scatology that comes along with them) 
7-8 cerano peppers
2-3 banana peppers
7-8 large cloves of garlic
1 medium yellow onion (substitute white onion for a more acidity if you are divorced or recently 
                                        spurned)
1 medium red onion

(You know what? Use any kind of onion you want, see if I care. I mean, it's MY recipe, but if you want to screw it all up and muddle your onions because you think you know better than me, what do I care?)

1 12 oz. bottle of dark ale (or preferred) beer
1 bottle dry red wine (cabernet or dry red table wine with minimal residual sugar - Merlot and Shiraz    
                                   are unacceptable)
2 cups brewed coffee (substitute 1 tsp. prepared coffee to 2 cups water, or don't put coffee in at all if 
                                    you are some sort of Juan Valdez hating jerk)
1 Tsp. red pepper flake
2 Tsp. chili powder
2 Tsp. Paprika
4 Tsp. garlic powder
2 Tsp. onion powder
2 Tsp. cumin
2 Tsp. dill weed
2 Tsp. ground mustard
2 Tsp. salt
4 Tsp. black pepper
2 Tsp. chicken soup base
1 dash of ground cinnamon
Got any other dry spices around? Throw some in.

Method:

Open the bottle of wine. You don't need it for the dish for awhile, but it's nice to have a glass of wine at the beginning of a journey… so long as it's not a driving journey. Sip the wine while you pull out all the assorted accoutrement necessary, like a Dutch oven, cutting boards, knives, a vegetable chopper a small frying pan, etc. It's best to plan your work spaces, move the trash can if you need to… get everything just so. This process will take as long as it takes to drink a glass of wine.

Set oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit, d'uh)

Once you have everything just so, refresh your glass of wine. Place it near you where it can comfort you and be available to your service, but not in your way.

Mix dry spices in an oven safe sauté pan and place in oven to toast a bit. How long? Until you remove it will suffice… this isn't baking. It's cooking. Cooking is an art. I think you need a sip of wine. You worry too much.

Cut peppers in half down the length and place skin side up on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

Peel garlic cloves and place them on the baking sheet with the peppers.

Drizzle the whole lot with a little olive oil and place into the hot oven to roast a bit. I don't know how long… a bit.

Place the meats into the Dutch oven and chop and stir while they brown completely.

Keep working at the meat with a wooden spoon or paddle. This is hard work and requires you to stop every here and there to tipple some wine.

Drain the excess grease from the meat. I didn't used to do this, but since my fortieth birthday is around the corner, I'd like to be there to celebrate it.

Place the drained, browned meat back in the Dutch oven. Remove the sauté pan of dry seasoning and sprinkle it over the meat while stirring. try to get an even coating. This will form the base of your chili. If you do this wrong, you just wasted about $15.00 worth of food and a half or more bottle of wine.

Finely chop the onion. I use a veggie chopper like a Slap Chop, but not a Slap Chop, because I don't live in a trailer. If you live in a trailer, and/or have a Slap Chop, use it. Mine is by a company that doesn't pay me, but I will say they rhyme with Campered Phef.

Put the raw onion in with the cooked meat. Stir.

Whew… there's a lot going on here. Take a sip of wine. Wait! is there at least 2 cups left? No? Ok, grab the beer you opened earlier. Yeh, that's nice.

Dump a cup or so of the beer into the mix. Go ahead and dump in the 2 cups of wine in, too. The rest is for you and if you're doing it right, it will all be gone by the time you're done.

Oh, crap! the peppers! Pull those out. Set them aside and let them cool.

Open all the beans and drain them and rinse them. Place them into the Dutch oven.

Open the tomatoes and throw them in.

Are you stirring? No? Why? Because I didn't tell you to? Well, do you need to be told to wear pants before you leave for work? Wait, you are wearing pants, aren't you?

OK, stir.

Use your Slap Chop to chop up the roasted peppers and garlic. They won't chop so much as they will mush into a tapenade. That's good… I'm too old for chili that has full bites of peppers.

Mix it all in and stir it up.

Add a little of the liquid coffee. Trust me. It's good. And it's better than adding water… water has no flavor and every time you add water into a recipe, Jesus cries.

Add the soup base now, too. Mostly because I forgot to tell you to do it earlier and you've shown a propensity to be a bit of a lamb. I mean you could have added it any time you wanted to, but since you waited until now, that's fine.

Stir the chili and make sure it's the consistency you like. Chili is supposed to be pretty hefty, so don't over thin it. You could always add a little tomato juice to get it the way you want it. But if you need to, add a little water. It's OK now. It wasn't OK then. Don't ask, just follow the recipe!

Let the chili steep for an hour at low simmer before you even try it. Chili needs to sit and mature. The flavors need to marry and divorce and go through a mid-life crisis and find Jesus and settle down with a nice flavor that respects it for what it is and doesn't expect it to be something it's not. This takes time.

After a minimum of an hour, taste it and add more spices as required to bring it to where you want it. You could splash some Tobasco Sauce, or if you live in that trailer and use a Slap Chop, you could use Frank's Red Hot.

Wait another hour or even two. Like I said, chili doesn't come into it's own right away. It needs to be nurtured. You should stir it every once in awhile. It's not necessary, but food that has been doted upon always tastes better.

Notes:

• If you don't drink, or don't want to put alcohol in your dish, replace with like volume of tomato juice. It's not as fun, but, whatever.
• If you don't like your chili to have a bite, I suggest making another dish. Like milquetoast, or something tofu based. You can buy those things at the store that has special parking for electric cars and women who gave birth by midwife.

And that's my chili recipe. Enjoy in good health!

The Thousand Dollar Club Soda

I am not to to the point of being able to laugh about it, yet. But I also know it's not the end of the world… or even the end of the day. I recently flew to see me parents out west after my Mother had some surgery.

Mom is doing well, and whatever else is happening in my life right now, that is the most important and wonderful thing. The rest, as they say, is pops and buzzes. I would like to say what happened is of no consequence, except just because something is benign in the grand scheme, the immediacy of consequence makes them a bit harder to swallow.

The average seat on a commercial airliner is approximately 3 scintilla larger than my ass. By the time you get to my shoulders, I am spilling into my neighbor's territory. Thusly crammed into the plane on the return flight, I was unable to work, as I literally could not type. It was futile. I tried all sorts of positions and exotic movements to work within the confines of my circumstance.

I probably looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to roll sushi… if the Tyrannosaur was sticking his tongue out in an attempt to tap into that last nth of whatever effort it is I think I can extract from doing so. If my Dad had a dollar for every time he told me to "put your tongue in your mouth", he'd have exactly half the number of dollars he would if he got paid for each time he said "get your hands out of your pants".

Either way, he would be wealthy.

Next to me was a rather sick looking man in his late twenties. Though from the looks of him, he fancied himself a younger person… a warrior, perhaps. He was smashed when he got on the plane. I didn't catch his name, but he repeated "double scotch on the rocks and a Coke Zero," enough times that I took to calling him Johnny Walker in my head.

Johnny walker was watching an episode of Law and Order over my shoulder. That's a nice way of saying that I was watching the episode on my computer with my headphones on. Since I had only enough room to sit and stare, I selected the only hour-long show available to me in an effort to pass the time. It was free.

I ordered a club soda as Johnny Walker ordered another of his concoctions.

I stress, this was only club soda. No booze. No flavor. It could have come from a can called "Puritans' Choice" for all I know, though the merry, dancing bubbles of club soda may have overwhelmed our Puritan forefathers… to say nothing of our Puritan foremothers!

The only thing hard about this club soda was the lime they put in it… which I hadn't asked for. In today's flying environment, that's tantamount to first class customer service. \

I was enjoying my free Law and Order and free club soda with lime. I wasn't enjoying Johnny Walker's breath, but that sort of thing is de rigeur flying back from Vegas. The party never ends, right up to the time you land back in Poughkeepsie or Menneola, or whatever plebeian jerkwater you come from.

The air was smooth.

No one coming down the aisle bumped me.

I was in no way interfered with.

So how did the cup of free club soda and lime, just do a bank shot on the screen of my open computer and land a seat away on the ogling Mr. Walker?

I looked at my hand, once holding a cup, now empty.

It was there just a second ago. Now, it was gone.

I sat, sort of blankly contemplating this as the insidious bubbly beverage was seeping its way into my computer.

A brief moment passed before I sprang into action. The first thing I did was the first thing any reasonable person would do.

I said, "shit!"

Not just shit - but a lurid, long, lascivious "sssshhhhiiiiit". The kind of shit where before the ssssshhhhh part is done, everyone in the vicinity already knows the end.

As quickly as I could, I turned to computer upside down and leaned on the power button to do an emergency shut-off. In keeping with the theme, I politely asked the flight attendant for "a shit load" of napkins, "please". People all around were handing me their tiny cocktail napkins that are useful for exactly what, I am not sure. But the thought was nice and I tried to be gracious in my thanks.

To her credit the attendant came back swiftly with what I would call a metric shit load of c-fold towels. Good ones. Collectively, everyone in aisles 30-32 was helping us mop up.

I did the best I could to remove as much water as I could from my computer.

Johnny Walker lamented, "I guess we're done watching Law and Order," which was odd, because he couldn't hear any of it. "That show is addictive," he finished.

He pointed to the computer and said knowingly, "That sucks."

I shrugged nonchalantly. However, I think I was sweating on the inside of my skin. What was done was done, but that didn't stop me from obsessing about it internally.

Deep in thought, and out of nerves I suppose, I began to pick at a stray hair on my forehead… well, what's now my forehead, but what used to be my hairline. This hair is tenacious, a fighter. A stubborn gladiator. The lone survivor of a battlefield once populated by seemingly infinite number of soldiers, all of which turned out to be weak recalcitrants excelling in retreat.

I did this until it hurt. Actually, I am quite sure it hurt for awhile and I didn't stop until it really hurt.

The flight attendant came by and Johnny Walker ordered another double scotch. I pulled out my credit card and said I would like to buy it for him. It wasn't necessary, he indicated, but I insisted. The flight attendant brought it, and one for me, too… "If you want it." There was a certain twinge of pity in her voice as she looked thoughtfully at the man who just spilled water all over his computer, his row of people, and who now had a fissure in his forehead.

I gladly accepted it and she never charged me for either drink, which considering the free club soda with lime, Law and Order and shit-load of towels was a veritable embarrassment of free customer service. All for no charge to me.

My parents bought a new car in 1986 that came with a matched set of leather luggage. Later that year, at the Eddie Bauer store, Mom saw the same luggage and remarked about the fact it cost a few hundred dollars and she got hers for free. My 11 year-old self responded, "actually, you paid $16,000 for yours."

As we descended into the complex southwest to northeast landing pattern over Detroit, Johnny Walker looked at me and said, a little breathlessly, "we made it."Suddenly, the six scotches started to make sense. He didn't like flying.

Right now, I didn't either.

My free club soda with lime, episode of Law and Order, shit-load of towels and double scotch cost me $1,000. Actually more, but for some reason, titling this post The Twelve Hundred Dollar Club Soda was less impactful to my finely honed literary sensibility.

My computer works, but it won't charge. It will only run off both the battery and A/C, but with no means to charge the battery, I am tethered. I have an exceptionally light, compact, expensive computer can't go more than six feet in any direction of a power outlet. A paradox unknown prior to our 21st century.

Also, I think the way its circuitry is, it starts off battery power, which is winding down. 85% at the time of the dousing… 77% now and going nowhere but down. I figure I have a month before I can't use the computer at all.

I don't have a grand to spend on a computer. I don't want to spend a grand on a computer. In the short-term, it's a little bit of a pain.

But, my Mom is healthy. I got to spend time with my family. And, while my clairvoyance is a little rusty, I think I will be blessed with being able to spend time with them into the future, which a couple weeks ago was not at all certain.

Long story short, I would steamroll a whole Apple Store worth of slender, lightweight, expensive laptops and toss my credit card on the pile while walking away nonchalantly for the ability to see my family, happy, healthy for years to come.

Here is to successful surgery, packed discount airlines, club soda and unsecured, revolving consumer debt. Life. Goes. On.