I would like to apologize first of all to all of boredandhungry’s adoring fans for the drought of posts by boredandhungry, which this post does not end. I am not boredandhungry, I’m just thehword. Anyway, about a month and a half ago I decided that I needed a real man’s meal, full of meat and beans and beef and meat. Like those frozen Hungry Man meals, but better. So I paged through my cookbook, which unfortunately does not have a meat category (though it does have an “Eat Your Veggies” section—what is this world coming to?), and found a recipe for chili. Perfect, I thought to myself, this is a great way to eat a lot of meat while still placating a certain someone by throwing in some beans (which have protein, I learned). So I quickly ordered the ingredients on safeway.com.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t bouncing around in my chair at work thinking about this chili every day until I got it in my mouth. My coworkers got pretty sick of how much energy I had, which is quite ironic considering where we work. But I didn’t want to call them out about it. I just wanted warm meat in my mouth. So I waited and waited and waited for the Safeway truck to get here. On the day it was supposed to come, I quickly got my workout in between 6:00 when I got home and 7:00, the earliest time it would come. However, I had to wait the whole two hour time slot until it came, so I didn’t get my groceries until 9:00, which was thoroughly disappointing, because that was too late to make dinner, especially since it was the week from hell at work when I had to get there at 7:30 instead of 9:00 basically every day. Thanks a lot, clean energy; it’s all your fault. So I pulled out the groceries and put them away instead. Mmmm two cans of beans, three cans of diced tomatoes, the lovely onion, a box of quality generic elbow macaroni. But nothing made me drool as much as the pound and a half of ground beef that I pulled out last. Look at it in there, all calm and pink, having no idea that its flesh was going to be roasted on a skillet tomorrow and shoveled into my mouth well before it had cooled off enough. I put it in the fridge and went to bed.

The next night I raced home. I think I even left work a little early. I’d never wanted anything more in my entire life. As the doors of the Metro opened I leapt out and fell into a somersault towards the escalator, which I scaled with ease. Nothing was going to stop me now! The mile walk home was a long slog as usual, but I had an unusual spring in my step. I was about to have the best night of my life, and I knew it.

Anyway, I just read the other entries in this blog and must apologize to this audience. I didn’t realize personal stories about the desire for food were not generally part of the blog posts. Perhaps because boredandhungry usually relates these stories to yours truly all the time. I must have merged the two in my mind. So now to get to the good stuff.

I laid out all the ingredients I would need on the counter and pulled out the big chili pot from the lower cabinets. On the cutting board I chopped up the onion. Now, some people laugh, but in order to ensure that you get all the quality flavour (trying to be fancy here) out of each onion bit, you must spend at least twenty minutes chopping it (you also must cry like a baby). I like to peel it first, but you don’t have to. Some people enjoy the crusty exterior and the nice crunch it provides to the finished product. I cut it in half and then chopped horizontal and then vertical. You’ll probably want a knife for this part. I then examined each piece and chopped again if it looked too big, and popped it in my mouth if it looked too little. Every piece must be exactly the same size; otherwise the presentation will be poor (even though it will taste the same). Luckily I wasn’t worried about the presentation.

I put the onions into the big pot and then ripped apart the meat with my bare hands! I stuck that in the pot and turned up the HEAT!

I waited for it to start to crackle, and I wasn’t disappointed. I cooked it with some stirring for about 12 minutes, once all the meat had browned. Next it was time to get those tomatoes and beans in there! We have now reached the point in the process where my momentum came to a skidding halt. Why, you ask? Well, because yours truly, no matter how much I practice and how many times I do it, is incapable of using a can opener. That’s right folks, it took me twenty-five full minutes to extract the beans and tomatoes from five cans. I remembered to put the lid on the pot with the meat and onion in it luckily, but it still cooled down quite a bit. So here is RECOMMENDATION #1: open the cans at the beginning of the cooking process. This way you can just plow through. And for those of you wondering, I don’t think there is going to be a recommendation #2.

Once I got the beans and tomatoes into the pot, I then added the water and the relatively generous amount of chili powder. I then cooked that on the stove for another ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Here’s where things start to get interesting. After that, I dumped in 8ish ounces of elbow macaroni. I was a bit skeptical about this at first. Why potentially ruin a perfectly good pot of chili?? But I did it anyway, because I’m a very, very adventurous person. I stirred it in and cooked for another ten minutes. By this point, the smell was overpowering. I was losing it I was SO excited to eat!

But, a word of caution: don’t get too excited. Not because it’s not good. OH it’s good! You just don’t want to burn off all your taste buds on your first bite like I did. Then you can’t taste any food for a few days. But it’s ok in the end. The macaroni, incidentally, added a delicious element to the utterly delectable chili. The delightful crunch of the onion pieces, the luscious taste of the tomatoes, and the scrumptious chewiness of the beans, which definitely produced much flatulence all night, contributed to one of the best experiences of the summer. But it was the meat that really did it. Such a simple thing; slaughtering a (probably genetically-enhanced) cow and feasting on its roasted flesh, brings joy into my life and the lives of everyone else. My housemates literally came out of the woodwork to eat this. Actually, that was a beetle. But one housemate came down from a nap to eat some, another left work early to get some of this action, and a third cancelled her plans that night when she heard that there was chili. Yes indeed, it brought the whole house together, united in applause. I would recommend watching The Office on your laptop at the dining room table with everyone while eating it. I mean actually watching the television show The Office. Not in the other way. But I bet that would be a great experience too. Maybe next time I make it . . .