Chili

Winter is coming.  Chili is a perfect food to have stored in the freezer for quick dinners.  And I have a crock pot.  So I made some.

This is what I started with.

There are a ton of recipes for chili on the internet.  And I wanted to stay with as many whole foods as I could (found one recipe that required a can of tomato soup and a can of cream of mushroom soup and I wondered why you needed soup to make soup).  This is nice because I can tweak it to my liking.  Ladybug will likely never like it so I am not so worried about making it to her taste.

Start out by browning the beef.

A former vegetarians delight!  I still have issues with working with raw meat.

While that was browning I used my handy-dandy can opener to release the beans, tomatoes, and sauce into the crock pot.

Have I mentioned that Ladybug really hates beans and tomatoes?

And then I began chopping the veggies.  I started crying after the onions so I stopped handling the camera.  One would think I might have also stopped handling a sharp knife but -- no.  And then all the veggies were put into the crock pot.

And then the spices...

It was at about this point that I realized that I really needed a bigger crock pot.  The meat has finished cooking and I have no where to put it.  And I can't even stir what is already in the crock pot.  Maybe I only needed one can of beans?  Too late now.

So I decide to transfer the entire stew to a regular pot and cook it on the stove.  Ummmm.  One problem.  I used it last night to cook the previous cabbage dish.  I did the dishes this morning.  And it is in the dishwasher as we speak.

So I waited.

Once the dishwasher was done I started cooking again.

Everything transferred to the pot.  Added the beef.  And I cooked it.  The difference between using the crock pot and cooking on the stove was that when I left for an errand, I had to turn off the stove.  A crock would have been nice.

But in the end I got this lovely chili to freeze.

I am pretty sure Ladybug will hate it.  But with a little cheese sprinkled on top and served with a cornbread muffin...she might eat a little of it.

Mean Mama