Why I Like Football

It’s not because I’m actually a huge fan of a sport that is to blame for over 300,000 concussions each year (in fact, I have a prediction that 25 years from now, we will watch replays of football games with the same level of horror that is exhibited when viewing reenactments of gladiator combat)… or because I think it’s quaint that 90% of all Maryland residents wear purple the day before, the day of, and the day after a Ravens game (I find this odd)… it’s because the arrival of a big game occasionally inspires me to try a new chili recipe – and a football game gathering typically provides a few willing people to test it out.

Today was a good day for this.  The Ravens were playing some type of pre-playoff or playoff game (which they won) and we were heading over to our friends house for the afternoon… the makings of a great day for trying a new chili recipe.

The recipe for today’s chili came from the Rodale Whole Foods cookbook – a fantastic book given to me by my sister-in-law.  It’s a great cookbook with a wide range of recipes – all of which use purely natural ingredients. I have already marked at least 20 recipes I want to try from this book – it’s very likely there will be several recipes posted from that book in the coming months.

I have been looking for a good Chicken Chili recipe for a while… the last one I attempted received decent reviews from my local critics, but I thought it was entirely too sweet to be considered worthy of the title “chili”.  I’m much happier with this new one.

It’s a relatively straightforward recipe, though certainly more effort than your basic cook meat & onions/add beans/toss in seasoning packet approach.

I cooked it in two phases – partially cooking the chicken first (my phase one) and then coming back around to cook the vegetables/add all the rest of the ingredients as my phase two.  I guess you could say there was a phase three as well – being when Dan came home and cleaned up the rather large mess that I made in the kitchen.  🙂

The end result of the effort is a chicken chili that resembles more of a hearty stew than a traditional saucy chili… it would be easy enough to thicken the base if you wanted to… but I liked it as it was.  Here’s the recipe if you want to give it a try.

My First Attempt at Cooking Indian Food

I love Indian food… the flavors, the colors, the textures…it’s easily in my top 3 favorites as far as cuisines go.   Thankfully, we are fortunate to have a few good Indian restaurants within delivery distance of where we live.  Perhaps it’s the proximity of these restaurants and their willingness to deliver bags full of incredible food to my door that has prevented me from ever attempting to cook Indian food before… perhaps it was my assumption that Indian food is just an inherently complicated cuisine to prepare… who knows.  The point is, up until last night, I had never attempted to cook Indian food.

After several calls back and forth with my mom who had graciously offered to go head out in search ofTumeric and Garam Masala, we had what we needed to get started.  We chose three dishes – chicken tikka on the grill, a simple daal, and a cucumber mint raita.

The chicken tikka was pretty simple… as was the raita.  These two dishes came out great – the daal was decent but definitely offers room for improvement.

Caroline loved it, Zoe ate cereal.