Chili Time

Fall doesn't feel like fall unless the smell of Roasted Green Chili's permeates our car and house.

... and the season is not complete without a visit to one of the farms to get our chills for the year.

The fresh green chili is roasted at the farm and then put  in a big plastic bag while it is still hot so it can steam; this makes it easy to skin.    We take them home, skin them and put them in freezer bags for all the green chili we want through out  the year.

These are the pinto beans we grew this year.   I let them dry on the vine and  then they were easy to shuck... I don't know if that is the way it is supposed to be done, because I have never done them before, but they seemed to turn out fine.

Green Chili  is a favorite dish in our area, and something I like to make first thing when we get our green chilis home, but with  fresh tomatoes, garlic and onion and pintos from the garden, and freshly roasted chilies from the local farm, we have all we need for a wonderful almost homegrown pot of Chili (what we sometimes call Texas Chili)

The temperature dropped below freezing the last two nights and it has been in the forties the last two days.  Steve made a fire in the wood stove for the first time this fall... it is a little earlier than usual, but perfect weather for a bowl of Chili and nice warm cornbread.


 Chili

Ingredients

2 pounds ground beef
8 cups cooked pinto beans
1 cup chopped onion
3 15 ounce cans chopped tomatoes or approximate amount of fresh tomatoes skinned and chopped.
1 15 ounce can tomato sauce
1 cup chopped green chilies
2 cloves garlic
1 Tablespoon cumin powder or to taste
5 Tablespoons chili powder or to taste
Approximately 3 cups of water
salt and pepper to taste


Instructions

Brown the ground beef  and sauté onions with the browning meat.  Strain the grease.  Put browned ground beef and all the remaining ingredients in a stock pot.  Simmer on top of a nice wood burning stove for an hour or more.... I guess you can  use a regular stove if  you must...  :p  .  A crock pot works nicely if you want to put it on to simmer slowly while you spend the day in town.  If you are using fresh tomatoes, you will want to simmer a little longer;  until the tomatoes have cooked down.  I always watch, taste and adjust if necessary, can't imagine cooking without doing it that way.

Enjoy