High five meals

We’ve been meal planning lately, and Sunday was scheduled as chili day. I wasn’t particularly inspired by the choice this morning, but it’s a hearty meal with good leftovers. So, chili it is. So that I wouldn’t bore myself to tears, AJ and I decided to attempt making our own soft pretzels.

Get excited, people.

We were a bit intimidated, but it totally worked. (Google Alton Brown’s food network recipe, and get down to business.) Key ingredients for use turned out to be the kitchenaid mixer, parchment paper and some perseverance.

I won’t go through the details, cause it was exactly as the recipe suggested – although the dough was a bit tough for me to roll into logs for which I am blaming too much oil as it rose – so lets jut stick with the goods.

Absolute perfection. Soft in the right spots and just the right amount of salt.

So good, in fact, that I considered slapping some nutella on these puppies and screwing the dinner that was almost ready. AJ, being the more level-headed one, convinced me to have the chili. Can’t say I was disappointed, especially since we served the chili over macaroni and cheese and a side of pretzel. Surprise!

My super fancy, heavily measured chili recipe, which I can actually recommend and look forward to having for lunch this week:

1. Cook 4 cloves of garlic in olive oil (start with big saucepan)

2. Add about 1.5 pounds of ground beef. Get impatient after 6 minutes and add 1/3 cup of chili powder. (seriously). Add some other stuff in, like cayenne pepper and whatever else strikes your fancy. Stir for a few more minutes.

3. Add a giant can of stewed tomatoes (with juice) that you bought on a whim from Penn Mac. Smush up the tomatoes a bit with your wooden spoon. Really precisely.

4. Rinse a can of red kidney beans and add ‘em in the pot. Stir some more.

5. Decide to ignore the recipe you’ve kind of been following, and add a can if beer to the put instead of the beef stock it suggests. Get sassy and throw some water in there too. After all, the worst thing is to have chili that’s too dry. Bring to a boil (I watched it, and it took FOREVER), reduce heat and let it cook or about 45 minutes. Stir every so often, and continuously call someone else into the kitchen and force them to compliment you on how good it smells.

6. Bake pretzels. Feel cocky about your cooking abilities, and add 1/3 up of crunchy peanut butter to the chili. (nope, not kidding, and nope, not an accident.)

7. Decide that the chili smells and tastes delicious, but is a bit watery. Regret adding in too much water in step 5. Pout a little bit, until someone suggests serving it over pasta. (you can also suggest this yourself, but then you’d miss the part where your lovingly cooked meal would be referred to as “poor mans skyline chili.”)

8. Make kraft mac and cheese, because you don’t want to “waste” the buffalo chicken mac and cheese you cooked from scratch last night.

9. Spoon some into a bowl, ladle some chili on top, and dunk in a soft pretzel.

10. Eat and smile.

11. Blog that shit.

*no picture here. Turns out, chili night was so good that it didn’t even occur to me. You’ll have to try this one yourself!