Yes, my chili is healthy

BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS CHILI

(low fat)

12 ounces ground beef or turkey

1 cup chopped onion

½ cup chopped green sweet pepper

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 14 ½ ounce can tomatoes

1 15-ounce can dark red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1 8-ounce can tomato sauce

2 to 3 teaspoons chili powder

½ teaspoon dried basil

¼ teaspoon pepper

cayenne pepper to taste

1. In a large saucepan cook ground meat, onion, sweet pepper and garlic till meat is brown and onion is tender. Drain fat. Stir in undreained tomatoes, kidney beans, tomato sauce, chili powder, basil and pepper. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Makes about five cups (4 main-dish servings).

Nurtrition facts per serving: 308 cal, 11 g total fat (4 g sat fat), 53 mg chol, 755 mg sodium, 31 grams carbo, 9 g fiber, 26 g protein

daily values: 17% vit A, 66% vit. C, 6% calcium, 29% iron


Actually, my version is much healthier because I use my own canned tomatoes (no salt); and I cook my own dry beans (no salt). 

abundance from the deep freeze

A deep freeze is a most wonderful invention; I'd be lost without mine. Odds and ends that would normally go to waste can be tucked away in there, then resurrected just when I need them. Trouble is, if you get too many unmarked odds and ends piled in there, you end up wondering what's what, especially if it's unmarked. There's always frozen chicken broth, and usually some cooked chicken... or during the holidays, cooked turkey. I keep those pretty much in one certain section, so they seldom get lost. It's those odd bags and containers of leftovers that get away from me.

I love having chili or turkey soup frozen in portions that I can take out for a quick meal when I'm running short on time, or when I'm just plain lazy. Since we're having good weather for cooking (wintry), I decided to make turkey gumbo for our dinner (and probably tomorrow's dinner too), and some chili for the freezer.

I'm working on using some of the assorted bags of frozen leftovers, so they don't get totally lost in the shuffle. Today when I went after some frozen diced onions that I'd put in there to save them from rotting last summer, I noticed an unmarked bag of something red. Something smooth and red, like ketchup. Only I've never frozen ketchup. I opened the bag and sniffed it: definitely a tomato product.

Then it came back to me. Two years ago when the grandson was staying with us and was working for an employer that supplied restaurants with various foods, he came home with some gallon cans of tomato puree that had been discarded because they were outdated. He planned to use them for target practice.

"Over my dead body." I said. "I'll open the cans, freeze that stuff in quart freezer bags, and use it when I make chili, in place of tomato sauce."

I've never been one to worry over outdated canned goods. Obviously, I don't worry about food that's been in the freezer for two years, either. I ain't skeered.

So the mysterious bag of puree, the frozen, diced onions, and some frozen, diced sweet peppers from the garden are in the process of becoming chili, along with ground beef from our dear departed steer, Meatloaf. Oh yes, and a jar of home-canned tomatoes. For dessert we'll have home-made butternut squash bread; I found half a loaf of that while digging in the freezer.

I feel like Miss Frugality today.

Peppers in November

I'm still getting sweet peppers from my garden. It's Missouri, peppers aren't cold-tolerant, and we've had several frosts.

The plants wouldn't win a beauty contest...

... and the peppers are getting blight spots on them. But blight doesn't hurt humans; only plants.

I have lots of diced sweet peppers in the freezer from the summer harvest, but why start using those until I have to? You can see these are nice-sized in relation to the M&M machine behind them.

What's that? You've never seen a home-made M&M machine?

My sister's late husband made one of these for everybody in the family. When I look at it, I remember Russell fondly; he was a wonderful man.

But I digress. I'm making chili today; I particularly like the Better Homes and Garden recipe because it's healthy and low-fat. It contains more vegetables than meat, and I am a big fan of vegetables. Especially home-grown ones.

I'm using tomatoes I canned this year, and the meat is from our own steer (rest in peace, Meat Loaf).

There's an unusual chili recipe over at A Joyful Chaos that I'd love to try; I'll guarantee it's delicious, because the lady who does that blog is formerly Amish. We all know how well they can cook! However, it just doesn't have the veggie content of mine. If anyone is brave enough to try it, please let me know how it turns out.

chili

Our temperatures went from ninety and humid to sixty and rainy, pretty much overnight.

One thing I noticed back when I had a job: every time there's a cool-down this extreme, people make chili. They eat it at home for supper and carry leftovers to work for lunch the next day; they talk about how good it tastes in this kind of weather, and say to one another, "You brought chili too?"

And chuckle, as though the same thing didn't happen every time the air gets a little nip to it.

Anybody else in the Midwest making chili? We had ours for lunch, Cliff took some to work with him, and I put some in the freezer for another day.

Family food customs

I asked my daughter what she wanted me to fix for her birthday dinner, and wasn't at all surprised when she said, "potato soup". It's something she's loved since she was an infant. One would almost think it's genetic, because Cliff and all his siblings are crazy about it, too, as were his parents. Years ago I started putting parsley flakes, celery, and tiny bits of carrot in my potato soup, just so it wouldn't resemble wallpaper paste so much. I've always used cream or half-and-half to make it; for years we had Jersey cows, so cream was easy to come by.

I like it fine, but it isn't what I'd choose for my birthday dinner. Rachel asked me to fix chili too, I think for those who don't care for potato soup.

And for dessert, she wanted apple pie. Rather than bake two pies, I made a cobbler (it's just a rectangular pie, I told the granddaughters).

And I made corn bread to go with the potato soup. That got me thinking about different family food customs.

My mother didn't make corn bread with potato soup; we used saltine crackers, thank you very much. If Mother made corn bread, that was our whole meal: corn bread and milk... and maybe for dessert, a piece of corn bread with molasses or honey over it. But when I married Cliff, I had to adapt to the peculiar custom of having corn bread with our potato soup.


While making dinner, I started thinking about the way I make my pies and cobblers. The fingerprint indentations around the edges look that way because that's how my mom did it. And the designs on top are hers, too. I simply never thought of making any other sort of markings on pies.

I'm just musing today. Don't mind me.