Chili and cornbread, with a fake beer for a fake newsman.
The wind was howling like all the banshees in Ireland and the weather wizards were making snow noises, so last night I cooked a basic chili con carne to stave off pneumonia, chilblains, and the Galloping Never-Get-Overs.
This recipe, from Melissa Clark at The New York Times, is a favorite. It calls for ground lamb, white beans and poblanos, but I went with ground chicken thighs, pintos, and a mix of green bell peppers and Hatch chile.
And this morning is as you see.
Naturally there are onions, garlic, ground Hatch red chile, jalapeños, cumin, coriander, Mexican oregano and other bits of this and that.
This version is not nearly as richly flavored as the original, and for that I blame the chicken thighs. Ground turkey thighs might have been a better substitute, but that would have meant a trip to Keller’s, where the vast meat counter encourages deficit spending.
Likewise, poblanos would have been preferable to the bell peppers, but roasting them in that wind might have brought the fire marshals.
Herself contributed some delicious cornbread and a green salad (not pictured) fortified with clementine segments to ward off scurvy.
Beans and cornbread don’t always fight. Sometimes they go hand in hand, like corned beef and cabbage.
That’s not a Wall. Not even the one from “Game of Thrones.” It’s the side patio, as photographed from the dining room, ’cause damme if I’m going outside today.
Don’t expect me to hit the bricks for the first ride of the New Year. We’ve already achieved the expected “high,” there’s a stiff wind out of the ENE, and the snow is coming in sideways.
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), has enjoyed a brace of delicious breakfasts and retired to his quarters to map out the year’s strategy on the underside of his eyelids.
Cranking up the internal furnace.
His adjutant, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, has drawn guard duty in Tower One, but as there seem to be no White Walkers within the perimeter — just a few socialist finches hopping around at the base of the maple, looking for a handout — she too is at a reduced state of readiness.
The conditions compelled me to fry up a skillet of my famous two-pepper hash (red bell and Hatch green, with diced red spuds, minced onion and garlic, Mexican oregano and chopped cilantro). Herself topped it off with a couple eggs over easy, and a generous sprinkle of grated Cabot sharp cheddar with a fruit cup on the side helped douse the fire.
Now the question is: How do I sweat that off? There’s not enough snow to do anything with, just enough to do something to me, and I’m kind of over that. But setting up the stationary trainer strikes me as a poor way to kick off a new training log.
Incidentally, I managed 3,309.8 miles on the bike last year, which is probably about a third of what Friend of the Blog Sharon logged. Still, I make it my best year since 2011, when I rode 3,370.2 miles.
And now, Lightnin’ Hopkins and I would like to wish all you cool cats and kittens a rockin’ happy New Year (h/t to the M-dogg for serving up that hot Decca platter). Wear it out. Tear it up.
Hm, we seem to be on something of an Irish-music kick here.
They’re sailing in the other direction these days, at least some of them. Zio Lorenzo and The Professor are settled in Italy and not missing Sioux City one iota, unless I miss my guess.
And now our friends Mike and Liz are bidding adieu and relocating to Lyon, France.
We had them over for green-chile stew last night and caught up. They’ve bought an apartment there, the house here is for sale, and come springtime they will be well positioned to observe Le Tour in its native habitat. Stage 8 will be right in their backyard, or arrière-cour, as we say in le français.
Novelist and poet Jim Harrison thought highly enough of Lyon to write, “If I were given the dreary six months to live, I’d head at once to Lyon and make my way from bistro to bistro in a big stroller pushed by a vegetarian.”
The place suffers from a dearth of New Mexican-style green-chile stew, however, and thus we were compelled to revive them after the house-hunting excursion. We couldn’t find a vegetarian with a two-seater stroller to push them home, though.
I’ve been rethinking my hunter-gatherer protocols after the last two Whole Amazon expeditions topped the $300 mark.
Jeff Bezos does not seem to lack for steady income, I mused. Jeff Bezos never shoves a hand into a pocket and finds nothing in there but four fingers and a thumb, I surmised. Maybe I should start redistributing my* income, I decided.
The main thing Whole Amazon has going for it — as far as I’m concerned, anyway — is convenience. Whatever you want, no matter how ridiculous, there’s a strong chance that Whole Amazon will have it. Don’t need it? You’ll probably buy it anyway, just ’cause. You rarely have to do the Three Store Tango when there’s a Whole Amazon in town.
This one-stop shopping comes with a cost, of course. That hand in your pocket? It’s not yours. It’s Jeff Bezos’. He’s bored with rooting around in his own pants and wants to see what you’ve got in yours. Mine’s bigger than that. C’mon, baby, you know you want it.
Gullible’s travels.
And goddamnit, I guess I do. I’ve been test-driving some alternatives, which involved plenty of driving, and Whole Amazon remains the One Store to Rule Them All, especially when it comes to top-shelf organic produce, cheese, and booze, both real and imaginary.
Albertson’s stocks some of the items I favor — Aroma Coffee, Twining’s Irish Breakfast tea, McCann’s Irish Oatmeal, Taos Mountain Energy Bars — but while the bars and coffee were cheaper at Albertson’s, the oatmeal actually cost a buck more than at Whole Amazon.
And Albertson’s organic-produce section is a very small garden indeed, with other organic products scattered around and about, hidden among the pedestrian bits by category, instead of huddled smugly in their own tiny gated community.
Smith’s has an OK wine selection, but doesn’t carry my Clausthaler Dry-Hopped non-alcoholic beer. There’s an organics ghetto, but the produce is minimalist, nearly as thin a crop as at Albertson’s. It’s just a few minutes by bike from El Rancho Pendejo, but so is Hell.
Sprouts Farmers Market stocks Clausthaler, but only the original fake lager, and the wines are mostly the sort one drinks from a paper bag while sitting on a curb.
However, Sprouts’ selection of organic produce is second only to Whole Amazon, and it offers a house-brand organic plain English muffin I like (Whole Amazon recently re-engineered its English muffins into gummy inedibility).
Keller’s Farm Store has the league-leading meat counter and Sabroso Foods tortillas. I wouldn’t use a Whole Amazon tortilla to blow my nose.
The upshot of this unscientific survey** is that I can do without Whole Amazon, but only by shopping at Albertson’s, Smith’s, Sprouts, Keller’s, and Kelly Liquors (for my fake beer).
* “My” income mostly being “her” income.
** And yes, this is how I roll when Herself is out of Dodge. You can’t stop me! To-GA! To-GA! To-GA!
As I rooted through Thanksgivings past it struck me that this iteration of the Dog Blog recently reached its 10-year anniversary. As hard as it may be to believe, it was in 2008 that we shifted over from the old self-hosted WordPress model so that all y’all could contribute comments, and those comments have been part of what makes the place hop.
Anyway, while I was zipping around and about in the Wayback Machine, and just ’cause I could, I snatched up 10 years’ worth of Thanksgiving posts for your amusement, a little waddle down the Memory Lane Buffet. Grab a tray, click the link, and help yourselves.
Mad Blog Media 