Tuesday, March 31, 2009

I am really good at...

I am really good at just maintaining.

I am terrible at starting.

I am even worse at ending.

Maybe I can blame it on the time of the year I was born in because Scorpio is a fixed sign. This means that once the project is underway, I am really good at keeping it going and tweaking the bugs out along the way. I know this is a blanket statement and there are a few things I am really good at starting. Meals. Opening bottles of wine. Turning the washing machine on.

When introduced into a broken system, other than my own, I am superb at fixing it, stream-lining it, maintaining it. I derive a great deal of satisfaction out of cleaning other people's messes.

Right now I wish to find direction.

That is all.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Nearly a month has gone by since I last posted but so much has happened.

Well, the chili cook off went well, it was very nice, and I came in fourth place out of about 20 entries.

Unfortunately, I found out that same morning that my aunt Rose passed away after a long battle with cancer, which has left a huge empty space in our family. She was the personification of grace and class and I really looked up to her. I started writing a fairly long entry about her but it just felt so meaningless and impotent that I couldn't bring myself to post it.

Since then, I've really been struggling with a lot of issues, not even directly related to her but somehow sparked by her passing. A lot of centers around other family issues that I struggle with, some it involves a friend that has disappointed me so deeply (if you are reading this it is not YOU), and a ton of it has to do with the passage of time and how I've been using it, or misusing it, or missing it, or just not hitting the mark lately.

I feel like I'm just barely getting by, mentally and emotionally, and that I am not really living.

One thing I aim to do, after taxes are done, is to really take a slash and burn approach to most of my material possessions. What this has to do with anything I don't know, but I do know that I have my apartment about 50% organized to the way I want it to be and have a fairly large storage unit that calls me to whittle it down mercilessly. I had been working on this a bit last month before the shit hit the fan and I need to get back to it.

I just feel like a lot of my things complicate my life. Their storage is a drain on my checking account since I pay for them to be stored. And let me tell you, visiting that storage unit takes me on a trip back in time that I really don't need to be revisiting. It's like I walk in there and my old life is all packed up looking at me straight in the face. China, clothing, the archives of what I once had.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Reinventing the Wheel

So I am slated to participate in a chili cook-off this weekend. Don't get excited, I think it's pretty much an laid-back, amateur deal. Don't expect to see me on the Food Network, sweating over a cauldron of chili.

Yet.

I'm going with Kirk to one of his best childhood/high school friends, somewhere back west. I'm told it's "outside of Allentown" whatever that means. This is someone I knew from high school too and they haven't seen me since I was a senior in high school I guess. Should be interesting.

I want to prepare a chili that stands apart from the crowd, yet is totally recognizable as, well, chili. It's not going to be a tofu chili, or a fruit chili, or a Polish chili, or any other kind of chili that is just NOT chili.

I'm feeling a lot of (pleasant) pressure to figure out how to pull this off. I'm sure in the end I will wind up making something that is great and that makes everyone love me for WHO I AM, and marvel over how I have opened their eyes to the unbelievable potential that is in this dish and inside me. Maybe they will sit back at the end of the night and think "she didn't turn out so bad afterall. Hell, she can really make some good chili."

And I'm thinking that with this chili, maybe my whole existence on this blog might come full-cirlce, since it is, afterall Mommydawg's Famous Chili. Or at least it started that way. Hmmm...

This is a lot to expect of one dish, one crockpot full of beans, ground beef, aromatics, tomato base, and whatever else goes in there. But I've been known to conquer my own world one meal at a time and this should be no exception.

If anyone has any ideas of what might help make a nice chili, I'm all ears. Again, it's going to have a very traditional base of beef, beans, tomato, spices. The rest is up in the air. It needs to be a crowd pleaser so it can't be too spicy, too hippy, too far-reaching for the average palate.

Some bullets:
  • Beef-toying with which type of ground beef might be best (chuck, sirloin, leaner cuts) vs. not ground beef (perhaps chuck steak cooked til it's falling apart and shredded).
  • Beans (kidney, a mix, or something else entirely).
  • Tomato (thinking a thicker consistency is best so maybe paste with a little bit of chopped fresh sans seeds and juice).
  • Aromatics (Needs the fresh garlic and onion but is there anything else I'm missing? Anyone have any opinion of maybe shallots or a particular color of onion or anything else I can't think of?)
  • Chili powder (Do I go nuts actually grinding my own? How is this even done? Any particular brand/style/etc. stand out to anyone?)
  • Thinking about making a back-up batch of brown roux just in case it needs a little more thickness and depth.
  • Beer (I remember having chili made with beer in it once and it was good. What type should I use, if I use it? Something light [not to be confused with "Lite"] and Mexican, like Corona or Tecate or should I got for dark, like Guiness?)
  • Some other ingredient I'm not thinking of?

Stuff on the side:

  • Corn bread with cheddar in the mix, half the batch with a slice of jalapeno on top, half without
  • Very high quality sour cream
  • Avocado, to slice right on the spot