Chilly, Chile, Chili - When its chilly get some chile and make some chili! - Here's a Recipe.

New Mexicans are very particular about their chile and no New Mexican worth their salsa would ever call our wonderful chile pepper chili. Chili is that Texas style bean and meat or lack of beans or lack of meat thick stew sort of concoction that you pour into a Fritos corn chip bag. Nothing wrong with chili but don't get it confused with chile.

As much as I love my traditional style of making chile and all the various chile sauces there are times when a big ol' bowl of hot steaming chili is just the ticket, add cornbread, avocado and sour cream and this is a bowl of winter heaven. 

Christo's Big Cowboy Chili

1 lb ground beef (or chicken or turkey)
1 large onion diced
3 cloves garlic minced
3 Tbs cumin powder
4 Tbs (use as much or as little as you want for level of heat desired) red chile powder (get it from New Mexico) 
1 small can tomato paste
2 cups water
salt and pepper to taste
1 lb dry of cooked kidney beans (I cooked a pound of dry beans in the pressure cooker you could use canned and it would probably work out to 2 quarts of beans) Make sure you have at least 3 cups of liquid with your beans
Avocado, sour cream and green onion for garnish

Brown the meat in a large skillet. When meat is brown add the onion and garlic and saute until soft. When the onion and garlic have softened then add the cumin and the chile powder and stir till everything is coated (if its not spicy enough add more red chile powder). When all of this is a nice deep red color then add the tomato paste and water. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add this mixture to your cooked beans and bean broth and simmer for 5 more minutes. Serve with your garnish and cornbread of you have it.

This is by far the easiest and tastiest chili you will ever have. No need to add any sugar as the onions add all the sweetness you need but if you do find that your particular can of tomato paste was extra acidy then add a squeeze of honey. Enjoy

A bowl of chili is a soothing, warming and an inexpensive way to bring lots of flavor and nutrition for you and your family, make some.

teach to learn, learn to teach

You have heard it "those that cant do - teach - and those that cant teach - teach gym" as the old saying goes but I guess those people already know how to cook. As old as I am I learn something new everyday and I mean every single day and as a constant learner I am now learning how to teach, how to pass on what I know to future generations.

Cooking is one of those arts that you can never stop learning, you may be good at one thing but you might need help with another so there is a never ending supply of things to learn. Today I taught a young student interested in embarking on a career in the culinary arts two of my favorite things to make. Eggs and dessert and what better eggs than Davidsons - Safest Choice, all natural eggs.

Brunch is a no brainer in my world and thats only because I've made it hundreds of times and since it is something so second nature to me it is one of the easiest things for me to teach since it is all technique, no recipe here. We started boiling water and separating eggs for the hollandaise while we thumbed our way through some pages of the Larousse Gastronomique.

While things were whisked and resting and english muffin toast was toasting we got our plates ready with some cucumbers, carrots, avocado and salmon.

Watching her do the "oh my god this is gonna be good" wiggle that some people do when they know they are about to taste something delicious was enough good feeling to last me for weeks.

This tasted fantastic, no doubt, but she has such a refined sense of smell and taste for her age it is exciting to think of the wonderful future she has ahead of her and to listen to her dissect the flavors was very impressive. She had two I had one - she liked it that much. Toasted english muffin with smoked salmon and avocado drizzled in copious amounts of hollandaise with a carrot and cucumber salad, you have seen this one before.

When we had our fill of eggs benedict we made a flourless chocolate cake out of the left over egg whites for dessert - this sealed the deal for the day. Chocolate, raspberries and cream foam how can you not like it? "Give a man(woman) a fish he(she) can eat for a day, teach a man(woman) how to fish he(she) can eat forever, show a man(woman) how to cook fish and everyone is happy" thus spoke Christo!

Did I jump the gun?

I am looking at 5 days before I and us actually have to impress my brother - his wife- and their child. Our hair still has a chance to adjust itself and our tans will have to be as they are, no matter what. .......shallow as we are we go deep.

oh phooey

My camera is still under investigation. Maybe they will fix it, maybe they will replace it, maybe its now really getting me upset. But then why would I need a camera when the internet has everything?

Last night was sushi night. So if you remember the pictures from before then you can visualize the dynamic inside out rolls and the the fantastic pieces of fresh salmon and mackerel, the slivers of cucumber and carrot, the perfectly ripe avocado and we splurged and got wild louisiana shrimp. The wild shrimp is so much different, it is actually sweeter and the flesh is more firm while not firm at the same time, hard to explain but the flavor is exactly the flavor you want shrimp to be. Two types of Sake, an unfiltered one, called a Nigori Sake which was excellent and a dry one which was normal and really good as well. Only problem is that everytime I make sushi I get a little better and a little more creative so the most recent one is always better than the one before. It looked a lot like this except more like enough for three. I dont think I could ever leave New York, I have become so accustomed to the food selection that living somewhere with out the variety would make me insane.


I also picked up two pounds of shark, yup the little guy saw shark and had to have some, it is such a different texture than other fish, it is like the density of a really good crabcake or something like that. And I once told the guy that you become the food you eat, for example if you eat goat then you are springy and jumpy like a goat, so after he ate the shark last night he became aggressive and forceful, usually it is funny but he got so mean tempered it was almost too much. The upside, he HAD to take a bath, yup he told me he HAD to take a bath, too cute huh?

Seeds

Everytime I eat an avocado, and that is weekly and during peak season sometimes daily, I plant the seed. I have 8 avocado plants right now and many seeds germinating. I have given away 4 plants recently and many more in the past. Avocado plants are so cool. They sprout up real tall and have the biggest most "new looking" leaves you could ever see - plus they make me feel tropical.

These are in the bathroom since this room gets the most light all day long.

If you look closely you will see a new one sprouting up. It takes a few months for the seeds to germinate. I have not calculated or measured or tracked how long but someone once said the germination time is relative to seed size. This is a view out one window of a sunflower.

And these are two other windows - one with squash and cucumber. I like vine plants since they crawl up and shade the window with green in the summer plus you get squash blossoms for fritatas. The other box is beans. I buy the bag of beans in the supermarket that are for mixed bean soup because you get this nice variety. Beans are cool because some climb some dont but they all have different colored flowers and they all produce green beans.