the smack factor

When it’s chilly you need chili. Southern chicken chili that is! Never have I made chili that ended with lime juice, middled with jalapenos, and started with methamphetamines. Kidding about the lime juice! Ha!

Anyway - I love to cook, I really do. I love new recipes, I love lining up the ingredients. I love putting all the chopped up stuff into little bowls like a TV chef and then just plopping it into a steaming pot or pan one by one. I love the smell of olive oil warming in a pan followed by the mouth watering sizzle of garlic and onion making sweet sweet love to each other - bouncing off the walls as the onions begin to brown. I’m hungry! When I cook, it’s probably the only time I’m totally silent. I read the recipe intently, timing things, stirring this, chopping that. The only muttering you’ll hear from me are probably “wait, was that teaspoon or tablespoon?” Cooking is art to me. You start with these ingredients… the paints, chalk, or even clay… and you end with this colorful piece of edible art (or sculpture, or painting). It’s my creative outlet. I don’t think about any stressors or life issues or anything other than the chicken, garlic, and parsley. Gauranteed, if you checked my brainwaves, there would be only one line and the rest would be dormant.

The recipe: found it here

Couple things I would change:

• I would read that first direction more closely. I added the garlic and onions to the oil almost immediately. i didn’t wait for the oil to get really hot (because I read that part AFTER I added the garlic and onions, yaw), so they simmered and sizzled for a while before the onions browned. I wonder what the taste diff would have been
• I would use fresh lime juice instead of the kind from the little lime shaped jug I have. i had to guess how much the juice of one lime would be and I think I over shot
• I would use a fresh jalepeno - I used jarred wheels. I think the taste would have been fresher, zestier.

The pictures:

the ingredients:

into the pot:

keeping watch: the doughboy

Put me in your mouth!

Note to my non meaty friends: could totally remove the chicken and maybe add tofu with poultry seasoning to make this edible by all!