The Great Chili Debacle

I hate chili. Well, not really. I hate MY chili. Waffle House chili? Great. The Brunswick stew you get at church port-a-pits? Fab. The chili my grandmother made? An elusive flavor I can never capture.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a good cook. I even used to be able to make good chili, long long ago. I lost the ability, somewhere along the way. It fell off the back of a truck during one of my many moves. I look back across the years at the good chili I used to make, and sigh.

The weather has been chilly (see what I did there?) and Boyfriend has been requesting chili. I have spent a collective zillion hours chopping, mixing, measuring, preparing. I lovingly put all my ingredients in the crock pot, and then carefully taste as the hours go by, adjusting spices. Beans, meat, onions, garlic, all manner of cumin or cayenne, basil or bay.

And in the end I always end up with the same salty meaty bean water.

I’ve tried more or less tomato. I’ve added this bit of veggie or that, some corn, some pepper, more onion. I don’t bother adding chocolate. Chocolate is second-level chili, and I haven’t even reached first. I’ve used various recipes. I’ve tried winging it. I’ve prayed to the chili gods but my cries fall on deaf ears and I am left with an inedible swill. My boyfriend manfully says, “this is great, dear, thanks for cooking,” and then sprinkles most of a block of cheddar and crumbles forty crackers into his bowl.

This is my moratorium on chili. I can’t keep playing with my crock pot’s emotions like this. I’m pretty sure feeding this to humans is against the Geneva Convention. No more, I say! This is the end. I can’t keep producing this weapon of mass disappointment.