Before we get too deep into some crazy yarn about my insane family or my lack of appropriate male companionship, and In the interest of full disclosure, I'm going to let you know right now that the only championship the following recipe has won is the championship of my own personal badassery. That said, it is an oversized-blue-ribbon-earning, imaginary-tickertape-parade-deserving, melt-in-your-mouth-meat-orgy-having delight. So there. And so what if it's the THIRD post about Texas chili in as many years? I think an appropriate yearly update of my evolving championship chili (tm) is totally worthy of some megabits or bytes or parcels or packets or whatever and you should totally give it a whirl if you give a crap at all about a real Texas tradition or if you just want something really, really, exceptionally good to make and freeze and have on hand for cold winter nights.

I feel like this may be the time to bring up an important relationship, and no, I'm not talking about the fun kind that results in breakfast and/ or coffee in bed (I'd like my eggs over easy with a side of crispy bacon and I take my coffee with half and half and a teaspoon of sugar, thank you). The very important relationship I'm talking about is the one you should make with your local butcher. I know many of us rely upon the packaged meat section at Ralph's or Safeway or Whole Foods because of the convenience, and I'm not trying to get all preachy or anything, but you really should consider identifying and then patronizing a local butcher. Yes, it's an additional stop and it may be out of the way and possibly even slightly more expensive, but I think it's healthier and more responsible to keep things as local as possible. I also think it's important to acknowledge that you're eating an animal, something that was previously alive and it should've been treated humanely. Not just because you care about that animal necessarily, but because it's healthier to eat animals that are treated humanely and are not fed antibiotics and hormones. As Americans our diets are overloaded with animal protein as it is-- we could all eat a little less of it. And if we're eating slightly less, our pocketbooks can take the slightly more expensive price tag along with the higher quality meat, right?

I did not read “Eat Pray Love” and I most certainly did not see the movie and that is saying something since I take great pride in my ability to sit through absolutely anything, from the simply tedious to the morally agonizing. I am quite the connoisseur of crap chick flicks and beach reads, but I just couldn’t bring myself to put up with Elizabeth Gilbert. I thought the book was kind of offensive, actually, though I guess it’s not really fair for me to judge since I read less than a paragraph before I commenced with the eye rolling and with the throwing of it across my loft. If I hadn’t been permanently scarred by an incident when I was four that involved a Winnie the Pooh picture book, some scissors and my irate dad shaking his finger at me, wildly screaming, “WE do NOT deface books in this house!” (I couldn’t bring myself to even highlight books when I was in college and I still have an unnatural fear of libraries), I may have lit it in a ceremonial bonfire in an act of literary rebellion and out of personal disgust.

But love it or hate it, you certainly can’t deny Gilbert’s impact on people-- lots and lots of people. I was having a hard time understanding exactly why anyone else really cared about Gilbert’s personal journey; how their own longing was connected to this privileged woman’s premeditated (a nice book advance makes for some pretty awesome truffle pasta, some swanky caftans and lots of elephant rides) and fully funded-by-someone-else’s experience. I thought maybe it was that we’ve all just gotten used to this conscious/ produced faux reality because of the current trends in television programming, but the Bossy Blonde offered up her own theory:

“The book is successful because, even though she doesn’t give great detail as to why, you find her at the beginning, in total devastation, rock bottom and destroyed on the floor of her bathroom and you instantly care about her and where she’s going.”

Texas chili, part III: you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can never put beans or tomatoes in her Texas chili

red lentil with aleppo chile and mint butter: eat pray ladle

Why? Because soup is cheap, delicious and easy. Kind of like me.

a weekly attempt to eat well and to savor life. or to see how much food I can get on my clothes.