I’m two months shy of my six month milestone and I have to say – I’m waiting for the shoe to drop. This job just can’t be that good. But so far, it is. I really like my co-workers. I’m laughing a lot. And I’m learning a lot – in an eager and non-judgmental atmosphere to boot. Sure, there are things to complain about but, really, those things are so minute as to not even be worth mentioning… yet.

So – when it came time for the “birthday pot-luck” I gladly volunteered to add my award-winning chili to the menu. I had planned to document the process, with pics and instructions, but as I got going, I couldn’t manage the logistics (there’s irony there, considering my job-title).

The recipe won me a first-place plaque in a chili cook-off years ago. It’s changed over the years, and is still changing – so it’s open for interpretation and improvisation¹. For instance – the birthday potluck recipe included a couple of roasted chilies my boss bought from a road-side vendor on a trip back from Dallas. I added a poblano and a bell pepper as well. The beef was chuck roast instead of venison or sirloin… So have fun with it and enjoy!

Madre del Bambi Chili

1 lb Italian Sausage
1 lb Regular Sausage (mild or hot – whatever is your taste)
1 lb Venison or Sirloin – cut in small cubes (salt and pat dry before cooking)

3 16 oz cans tomatoes
2 red onions – chopped
4 – 6 bell peppers (or mix your peppers – poblano, etc.) – seeded and chopped
1 – 2 heads of garlic, minced

3 oz cumin
2 oz. chili powder

Improvised – start in small amounts:
Oregano (if fresh, chop a tablespoon first)
Basil (same as above)
Marjoram
Crushed red pepper

Teeny-Tiny – 1/8th to 1/4 tsp. each:
Cinnamon
Nutmeg (fresh grated is best)
Ground Clove

1/2 bottle Worcester Sauce
1 sm. jar Taco Sauce
1 jigger of whiskey (Wellers or Jack Daniels)
Tobasco – to taste (optional if you want to back off the heat)

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Brown the sausages and drain on paper towels. If needed, add a little oil (veg. or grapeseed) to the pan, brown the venison/beef. Remove the meat and put into a big stew-pot along with the drained sausage. Add a little more oil to saute pan if needed and saute the onion and peppers until soft, add the garlic, cook til garlic is fragrant. Scrape up the sucs (browned bits of cooked meat). Add the veggies to the stew pot.

Add the seasonings, tomatoes, taco sauce, Worcester, Tabasco & whiskey (in short: everything else). Bring the pot to a simmer. Taste frequently and adjust seasonings – salt & pepper, etc. Add liquid if you feel you need it.

Cover and put in the oven for 2 to 4 hours. You’ll know it’s done when you can easily fork shred a piece of the venison/beef.

Cool down the pot quickly in an ice bath (I do this in the sink with ice and water) then refrigerate over night. This is a critical step – the cold bonds the flavor and seasonings.

Reheat in a crock-pot or over the stove. Serve with some luscious corn bread and a hearty beer and your done!

It’s been a number of years since I’ve had to be uber budget conscious. The last few years especially nice with a bit of extra income filtering in allowing me such niceties as travel and relatively unfettered shopping (mostly gadget related). I was now going to have to dust off some of my grad-school/starving artist survival skills and knuckle down to a tight, tight budget. The travel and shopping were reluctant but easy cuts, that left a couple of not-so-easy cuts to examine.

Now, I am basically a lazy person; that is to say I tend to look for the shortest possible route between two points. Or even better, find a way not to have take the route in the first place. This has resulted in certain luxuries I’ve indulged in, such as having a housekeeper in every other week to clean, a yard guy during the spring and summer and eating out or take-out on a regular basis.

Of course, such luxuries cost some coinage and my new cinched-in budget meant I needed to cut back. But, I wasn’t about to sacrifice the housekeeper and with winter on the way, I wouldn’t need to worry about the yard until the spring. That left my dining habits – convenience was going to have to make way for practicality and budget cuts.

Translated – I was going to have to start cooking for myself. And this was a Big Deal.

I didn’t grow up in a house centered on the kitchen. My mother was great with a few dishes (brisket being no. 1), but on a daily basis our meals tended to be boiled and bland. Canned vegetables were a god-send to her (hence a lifetime disdain for green things) and when TV dinners were invented I think she must have done a private little happy dance. My grandmother wasn’t a cook either – her maid Pearl was and we were not allowed in her kitchen. No ma’am, nuh-uh. It’s no accident, then, that when I left the nest, my culinary skills were sorely lacking.

I had a few of my Mom’s better recipes, but too many failures and my lazy tendencies pushed me farther and farther from the kitchen just as the rise of fast-food and the restaurant boom was getting started, not to mention the burgeoning industry and magic of prepared, frozen and processed foods. It was a hungry lazy person’s era of nirvana.

It’s an expensive (and unhealthy) nirvana, though. Now with my shrinking budget, here was my opportunity to change some bad, bad habits and learn another skill in tandem with my daily lessons in accounting. By day – honing my expertise on budgets and such, by evening putting a budget into practice and learning to cook.

Adding motivation for these efforts was a network of foodie friends who love to discuss, blog and tweet about food (as well as eat), complete with illustrations and video. And, ironically, I happen to be a Food Network junkie. It was time to start the clock and put Rachel Ray to the test…

I began by collecting Food Network recipes – I’d record my favorite shows, play back and pause while logging the recipes in a notebook¹, craft my shopping lists and hit the grocery store. I also added numerous food blogs to my Google Reader, starring and sharing recipe after recipe. And of course, there’s an app for just about every culinary need occupying space on my iPhone. In short, and really it’s no surprise, I became obsessed. In a good way.

A year later I have to say I’m doing pretty good – I cut my food spending by twenty percent. My lazy side does nags at me – but I’m able to quiet it with some marathon cooking and freeze sessions which allows me to, for instance this week: pull some homemade tomato sauce and some meatballs from the freezer, some fresh basil from the garden and in no time have a home-cooked meal, nothing out of pre-processed and preservative laden jar and far better than a Sonic burger or a packaged meal.²

My iPhone is filled with food porn – shots of my efforts which have joined the meal tweets on Twitter. Once re-employed after my first paycheck, I indulged in the purchase of a Shun Santoku 10″ chef’s knife³ and I joined an online cooking school to learn more of the basics in the kitchen. I’ve learned how to enjoy cooking – even my failures. I’ve discovered an elegant poetry in the process, the prep, the building of a dish, the chemistry, rhythm, flavor profiles, serendipity of an idea that just happens to work (ever try throwing in a couple of spoonfuls of orange marmalade in that chicken dish?).

Fast and pre-processed food no longer has the allure it once did. I’d say I’m a fan of the slow-food movement – it’s far more satisfying without a doubt.

I may begin sharing some of those efforts here. I’m inspired by my no. one favorite food blogger Dutch Girl Cooking, who combines two loves – cooking and photography, producing posts with photos that make me hungry even on a full stomach.

So, with that said – got a recipe to share?

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¹ Yeah, I know there’s a website with the recipes – but this was more immediate and I was getting the low-down on technique as well.
² Not that I don’t indulge or have fast-food relapses. A drive-in burger is a convenient treat, for sure… and I know where the best ones are in my town.
³ Just as any carpenter will tell you – you have the right tool, you can build anything. The same is true for kitchen tools.

I am entering week four of my “new path.” A path that is dictated by budget – a very tight budget. I’ve had to re-examine my spending habits, which included re-examining my eating habits. Being a complete kitchen idiot, ninety-nine percent of my meals manifested out of a to-go box, bag or, if I was feeling daring and adventurous, the micro-wave.

Up until this evening, I was holding my own in the battle between all things food and making it work in the kitchen. I discovered the blessing of pre-roasted chickens in the grocery store and am now able to stretch that sucker for a week and beyond. There are frozen portions of homemade chicken soup nestled next to the homemade tomato soup in the freezer (soups I learned from a brief stint in a sandwich shop years ago – it came back to me pretty quickly).

Last week I made my first ever meatloaf. I know! How can someone reach my advanced years without ever creating one of those wonders???? It was pretty good and provided my school lunches for most of the week.

So I was feeling fairly confident. Confident enough to attempt a pork loin this evening. The recipe came from one of my new favorite sites Sparkspeople*. A simple recipe for a balsamic vinegar glazed pork loin.

That simple recipe ended up creating a scene of purple spatter that would have made an prime case study for crime scene investigation. And before that happened I had to solve the problem of too much meat, get it into my head just how to brown meat, and then do the math on roasting time in the oven…

Once the stove disaster happened (make SURE the pan has cooled to low before pouring vinegar into a pan of sizzling hot olive oil), the balsamic vinegar glaze was off the menu. The pork loin was skewered together (a result of cutting it in half) and popped into the oven.

It’s resting comfortably now while an impromptu pot of applesauce is steaming on the stove. I can’t screw up applesauce, now can I?

Want to lay a wager down?