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.

New “New Year Soup”

I get a lot of recipes from Heidi Swanson’s site, www.101cookbooks.com.  It’s my primary go-to site for new recipes… particularly when I want to experiment with a new ingredient that I haven’t cooked with before.   Most of her recipes are pretty basic, with ingredients that are relatively easy to find provided you find yourself at Whole Foods every now and then.

A couple of my favorites…

• Brown butter balsamic sauce (for pasta)
• Wheat Berry Salad (from her book, Super Natural Cooking)
• Caramelized Onion Dip (finally – an onion dip that omits the Lipton soup packet!)

Earlier this week, she posted a recipe for a New Year’s Noodle Soup that looked fantastic.   I guess it’s technically not her recipe (she adapted it from a recipe in  Saraban, by Greg & Lucy Malouf)… but I’ll give her credit for it since she’s the one who brought it to my attention.   I attempted to recreate this tonight while also cleaning out my refrigerator and avoiding a trip to the grocery store – what I ended up with was a pretty good soup that was loosely based on this recipe that I definitely want to make again.

Here’s the recipe.

(Mom – this one’s not for you… you’ll see why when you check out the ingredients.)