Knee Slappin' Good Chili

I promised my friend Lorena from Panama that I would send her my Chili recipe over a month ago and I still haven't done it (naughty!) so I'll post it here for any and all. This is a quick chili, rather than a crock-pot chili.

Fun fact: at the grocery store when I say "what should we have for dinner this week?" Tim almost always replies either, "Chili" or "Tacos."

Main Ingredients:
1 lb Ground beef or Turkey
1 bottle Beer (preferably light beer, I usually use Corona)
2 16oz cans Plain Tomato Sauce
1 10-16oz can Diced Tomatoes (you can use plain or RoTel)
1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can pinto or chili beans, drained
1/2 Onion, diced
2 Cloves Garlic, chopped fine
Any kind of diced peppers you like
3-4 Carrots, grated finely (the not-so-secret ingredient)

Spices, in order of quantity:
Cayenne Pepper
Paprika
Cumin
Salt
Garlic Powder (yes, more Garlic)
Cinnamon

Toppings:
Shredded Cheese
Sour Cream
Diced Fresh Tomatoes
Saltines or Fritos
Onions (blech, why?)

In a large deep pot, begin to brown the meat over medium high heat. If the meat is very lean (like Turkey) you will need to add a little olive oil to the bottom of the pot to keep it from sticking. Once the meat begins to cook and break up a bit, add the onions and peppers and let the onions get a little translucent, cooking about 3-4 minutes.

At this point I usually add the first round of seasonings. I don't measure these but I would estimate that it's a about 1/2 a teaspoon of each seasoning except for the cinnamon, which is just two dashes. Mix this in and then add about half of your bottle of beer. Let the meat cook in the beer, stirring occasionally, until the beer has cooked off almost all the way, then add the carrots, garlic, and the rest of the beer (assuming you didn't drink it--if you did, well then I guess you need to open another one).

Cook this down a bit, 5 minutes or so.

From here, everything is fairly easy. Add both cans of tomato sauce and the diced tomatoes, as well as the beans. Rinse the tomato cans with a bit of water and put the tomato-y water in the pot. If you forget this step, that's fine, but it helps get all the tomato-goodness out of the cans, and you'll need to add about a cup or so of water to the pot.

At this point, I attack the chili with seasonings again to taste. Be careful because you can always add, but you cannot take out. Start with a few dashes of each and taste it to see what you like. We like a LOT of cumin, and I don't add oregano or black pepper at all. But some folks are the other way around. Obviously though, if you don't have at least some variety of chili powder (cayenne and paprika in this case), you should throw in the towel.

Bring the chili to a low bubble over medium or medium-low heat, trying not to let it boil crazily. After 20 minutes it will be hearty and ready to top with whatever floats your boat.

On the next day, I put the leftovers over pasta with shredded cheddar. Which should be illegal, but no one is stopping me.

Old News is Awesome News

The season finale of Battlestar Galactica aired in March of 2009. Obviously not "Battlestar Galactica, the sci fi series from the 70's" but the reimagined Battlestar Galactica of 2003-2009, which is referred to in our household simply as BSG.

Still, this post is not past its expiration date, thanks to the magic of DVD, and really, I just can't take it any more.

If you people don't watch this shit soon, my brain is going to explode.

Here is my challenge: if you don't watch the entire series from beginning to end, and find it 50 times more satisfying and life-changing than the finale of LOST, I will come to your house, make you and 10 of your friends a 4 course dinner, and never mention it again.*

I don't talk about TV a lot so you must know I'm serious.

Tim and I started watching BSG because of a coworker of mine, who spent a great deal of time on the phone making sure that he wouldn't have any business obligations the night of the show, and saying things like, "OMGit'sgoingtobesofuckingamaziiiiiinngggg!!" Because he was an awesome co-worker, and having Netflix feels like having free movies all the time, I put the first disc of the series on our queue.

Let me just note here: Tim has always stated unequivocally that he thinks science fiction is beyond a waste of his time, like Glen Beck, and brushing his teeth.

When the disc arrived, he said what he also says about rom coms, and things he can't remember ordering: "Who put this crap on the queue?!?! You will be watching this by yourself."

So I watched the first episode--which is actually a three hour mini-series--alone. And fell asleep. It was an epic nap. Lots of explosions and yelling. I don't know how I missed this key fact, but I had no idea it was going to be three hours long, so I didn't program my attention span accordingly. My own fault.

This, however, necessitated watching the whole thing again... in Tim's presence. And at that point, Tim admitted that yes, science fiction was pretty damn awesome and had maybe contributed something to the universe, and we should immediately add the rest of the series to the queue.

Battlestar Galactica is, like LOST, a character-driven series about a group of survivors. Only instead of being on an island, they are on a fleet of star ships, the only few ships to have survived a nuclear attack on their planetary system by a group of machines called Cylons. Cylons were created by humans as workers and soldiers but they rebelled. Now they've returned, and they've evolved. There are some Cylon models who appear human, and they want nothing short of the destruction of the human race.

So. Ok.

This show, being on the Sci Fi Network, could very easily turn into a hot steaming ball of cheese. (Dinoshark? Anyone?)



However, this show is a mass of taut nerves and short fuses. It's a visually stunning show (yay production value!!), but what's more, it's about two issues hidden in a nifty sci fi wrapper: politics and love. Can you have love without politics? Probably not. How many explosions take place when you can't separate politics and love? God, that's the fun part.

From the very beginning of the series, you become invested in the success of the survivors in their search for a place to simply live. The terrorist threat against them comes not only from outside, but from within their dwindling ranks, and possibly from within themselves, as it becomes clear that any one of them could be a Cylon. If you are a machine with emotions, how deeply can you trust those emotions?

I'm disturbed by how much this show says about our culture. Aaaaand by how much the DVD boxed set costs. Because literally every day, I think, "I want to watch Battlestar Galactica."

Bonus, there's a character named "Hotdog."

So say we all.

*If the reason you were unimpressed by the finale of LOST is because you didn't watch the whole series, Dad, you are exempt from this challenge, but I still urge you to watch BSG, because it will make you think twice about robots, er, because you will enjoy it immensely.

So here's what happened.

I am supposed to be in Peru right now. In fact, according to my itinerary, today, the 19th of August, is supposed to be the first day of a 4-day hike over the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. A hike that I have been planning for well over six months, and dreaming about for something like fifteen years.

Why, then, am I sitting on my couch in DC (curse you, DC!), blogging instead? Oh, that's a lovely story.

In all reality, things started to go wrong on Saturday. I was here in DC by myself, just arrived from Colorado. I'd literally been on a plane, with a headache, all day Friday and I really just wanted to relax and stay in my apartment, but there were a lot of preparations to be made for our trip, and I had to do it myself as Tim was on his way home from Panama. Some time around 3:00, I scraped my butt off of the couch, put some pants on (well, it was a really cute skirt, actually, if you must know), and headed out the door.

1. Bus to the (Sexy) Safeway on L for prescriptions
2. Metro from Chinatown to Tenleytown to Hudson Trail Outfitters and purchase a metric ton of necessary gear for Inca Trail
3. Metro from Tenleytown to Columbia Heights to Target for travel-size stuff, sundries, and an hour of aimless wandering
4. Metro from Columbia Heights to Potomac Ave., walk to the 14th St. (Un)Safeway for enough food for dinner, breakfast, and high-carb and -protein snacks for the trail
5. Carry everything purchased at all of these places home, trying not to lay down under a fort made of my purchases and cry. I hate shopping alone.
   

By the time I got home, I was starving, but I was waiting to make dinner until Tim got home from the airport "at 10:30." This turned out to be a mistake because American Airlines lost all of Tim's luggage in Miami.

So. Tim comes home--no luggage--and it's not toooooo bad because there are only a few really vital things in his bags like his trail shoes; the airline is supposed to deliver them before 2:00 Sunday, and our flight leaves at 6:00.

The curtain closes on Saturday, and I'm only slightly keyed up.

Le Dimanche Arrive. La pièce de résistance.

Sunday morning I wake up with a fever. I feel achy and terrible and I can't stop thinking that I might have another staph infection (Huzzah!), and rather than travel to an underdeveloped country on the wings of a potentially deadly infection, Tim and I decide that we should find a doctor, STAT. (See how I did that? STAT!) But it's Sunday, which means all the normal doctors are closed, and there's no way I'm going to an emergency room, where everything is blown out of proportion: the cost (Oh, you didn't know we were going to charge you $65 for that bandaid? Soh-rry.), the amount of time it takes, the number of people it takes to diagnose the splinter in your finger. Uh uh. We had a flight to catch. Which means: Minute Clinic.

Voilá, a list of things that went wrong in chronological order.

• The car is dead and must be jumped.
• The Clinic's "system is down" and therefore everything is taking three times as long as normal. This means we get to watch the angry lady behind the pharmacy counter mess up 15 people's prescriptions in the space of an hour while-u-wait.
• I'm pretty sure the couple in front of us are here because they have an STD. Which is their problem more than mine. But I'm just saying. "No swimming for a week, young lady."
  
• American calls to say that the guy with Tim's bags is waiting outside our apartment (yay!) but when Tim tries to leave the clinic to let him in, the car will not start. So he has to take a taxi to our apartment, put the bags inside, and then take a cab back. He can't just leave them outside our door... because it's raining.
• I finally get in to see the doctor... who tells me he's not allowed to diagnose staph infections, "that's usually a referral situation." BUT I'm obviously in a huge hurry and I feel like crap so he writes me a scrip for an antibiotic, and then I have to write my insurance info out on a blank sheet of paper because, you know, the system is down.
• I put in my prescription. It's only $4! Yay!
• The car is still dead. And it's boxed in. By what turns out to be church parkers. Baptist Church parkers. Tim's car is an automatic and it won't budge an inch once it's turned off, so there we sit for two hours plus some because the woman with the car next to us, as her her cousin informs us, "is folding pamphlets." When she and her passengers arrive, they all get in the car, close the doors, and pop the hood without saying a word.
  
• At this point it is nearly 1:30 in the p.m. Neither of us have eaten. We are not packed. We have to leave for the airport at 3:00. And my fever is getting worse.
  

So the horrible decision is made to postpone the flight until Monday or Tuesday. Tim calls the airline as soon as we get home, and hearing him postpone the flight that we've been looking forward to for so long makes me burst into tears. Which makes my fever even worse.

FYI: I have never canceled a flight for sickness in my life. Stephen King says that people get sick before flights because it is our bodies telling us the plane is going to crash. I spent a good amount of time scouring the news to see if ours did, but it did not. It is really, really bad, when the only thing that can cheer you up, is the news of a plane crash.

And then Tim starts going through his luggage.

Because his passport isn't here.

And his passport isn't here...

Because it's in Panama.

And if Tim's passport is in Panama,

Then we're not going anywhere.

At all.

You see, for his job, Tim travels on a diplomatic passport. It's illegal for travel on a diplomatic passport just for shits and giggles because diplomats have special privileges. And if you abuse them, you can get fired, and I'm not sure, but I think you can go to jail. At least I kind of hope you do, because if I have to wait in this horrible line you should have to too. And even if he was allowed to travel on the DP, our itinerary expressly states "We have booked this tour with the passport information you provided us, so if you change your passports, you must bring both, the old and the new one, in order to be able to take this tour." So even if he could get into Peru... he couldn't go to Machu Picchu.

This is stated right above the place where it says: "This tour is non-refundable."

That's right folks. We can hold the cost of the flight. We can keep or return all of the gear if we want to. But all of the money we paid for the tour, which, in case you're wondering is a nice fat $1600, is gone. The tour company said that they would let us know in 5-6 days if some of the balance could be applied forward since Tim and I still want to go, later in the year, but it's a big if, and a big some.

So. In the space of a few short hours, the potential for Peru went like this:

9:00 a.m. 100% (we're going today! YES! Best day ehvar!)
12:00 p.m. 85% (we'll go tomorrow when I feel better! Ok.)
1:30 p.m. 75% (We'll go Tuesday, when I'm SURE I feel better.)
4:00 p.m. 60% (We'll go Wednesday when someone in Panama overnights the passport)
4:30 p.m. 40% (No one in Panama can hear my screams. No one in Peru is answering our calls.)
12:00 p.m. 0% (This is the worst day of my life. Period.)

How much more excitement can you handle? Gauge your answer carefully before proceeding, Dear Reader.

At 1:30 in the morning, I had been crying and feverish for fully 12 hours. I was laying in bed, thinking about--I wish I could say, "eating a whole box of popcicles"--thinking about maybe just dying. Tim came and laid in the bed with me, and put his arm around me and I turned to him and said,

"Will you marry me? For real?"

And he said,

"No. Shut up." And he ran into the other room.

Which really helped the situation.

So I rolled over and put a pillow over my head, and wondered if our plane had crashed some more.

But Tim came back with his State Department cuff link box, and in it was a very cheap and crappy little ring, which nonetheless has great symbolism and took Tim a very long time to pick out, because he'd been thinking about it much longer than I had (and it takes him a long time to pick out everything).

And he said, "will YOU marry ME?" and something else that was very, insanely romantic, but I can't remember, because I was laughing at the ring, and I was a little punch drunk from not eating and being on a lot of medication.

As it turns out, he was going to propose at Machu Picchu. But since everything got ruined, and then there was an earthquake, and then demons had a barbecue on top of the rubble, and after all that I didn't kick him out of the house, I think he figured he should get me while my guard was down. Which is almost as sneaky as getting someone while their brain is deprived of oxygen on top of a mountain.

It's possible that this sounds crazy, but I'm almost relieved that the stars aligned this way. That he proposed during the trial-by-fire (btw--our car needs a new alternator, $450 worth of work, thanksverymuch), instead of when everything is cute, and happy, and covered with whipped cream and double rainbows. It's really easy to like someone when everything is going well. How easy is it to like them when they've left their passport in a cupboard in a locked apartment in Central America, the day before you're supposed to go on vacation? For that matter, when they're feverish and sniffling and talking nonsense and they're wearing a "Pineapple Express" t-shirt that's two sizes too large?

If you ask Tim, he will say hands down that he proposed to me. He had a plan (albeit one that did not involve this level of catastrophe). That I have asked him that a 100 times and I'm usually drunk, and anyway, I didn't have a ring. The Gender Studies Minor in me wants to say, "what does that matter?" But the other 80% of me is relieved. I'm more in love with him than ever (how cheesy is that?) and I'm glad we want to marry each other.

And I'm so glad we never do anything normal.

Home again, Home again

It's very hard to blog when you can't hook your laptop up to that sweet, sweet internet juice. Not that I terribly mind not blogging, or not spending 5 hours a day on the internet everyday for two weeks. That was kind of nice. When I'm in Colorado I get in a Luddite funk where I want to reject all technology, which works out since half the time I have no cell service or internet anyway.

Part of "not being plugged in" means "spending time with other humans." Who, in this case, just happen to be my family. Everyone gathered from seemingly all points of the earth for my famous grandparents' famous 50th-anniversary-and-shed-cleaning. That's how we do things--we're very practical: let's have a party AND ALSO get some work done.
Meanwhile, we decided to hike Mount Marcellina, which is on Kebler Pass, near Crested Butte. For those of you unfamiliar with Colorado, that's code for "it's in a gorgeous place." (We picked wild raspberries on the side of the road, if you need proof.) Marcellina itself, however, is sort of terrifying looking (as you can see). And a little terrifying to hike. There's no trail, and half the hike is a scramble over sliderock which is, according to my sagacious grandfather, "slicker than shit through a tin horn."

But it starts out so innocently, it's easy to convince yourself the hike will be a piece of cake. See? a pretty flower!
And look how happy everyone is! Look how the sun shines! This will be easy-peasy.
But. But. But he wasn't lying about that sliderock. And the other half of the hike is an all out, straight up, scramble through the brambles, pulling yourself up a sheer face by grabbing on to the trunks of scrub oaks and other shrubs, and then using the base of those trunks as "steps" to go further up. As Mita said, "Well, I needed to reopen the cuts on my legs." It's a badge of honor.
I was at the head of the pack and there are seven people hiking directly behind me in this picture. Can you see them? Neither could I. We had to continually play "Marco Polo" to make sure that the people in the back hadn't plummetted off the mountain face to their demise. Or something like that.

However, when we made it through the scrub, and up to the sliderock, the view was breathtaking, and I billygoated my way to the top of the nearest rock for a better look. Here is my family on the ground below:

And here is the valley. It's a shame that no camera can ever really capture what you see up there. Colorado Rocky Mountain Hiiiiiiiiiighhhhhh...

After monkeying our way up nearly to the top, the lightning began. Lightning has a funny way way of declaring: "YOU HAVE REACHED THE SUMMIT! CONGRATULATIONS! GO HOME NOW" when you're up at 11,000 ft and feel a little like a human lightening rod. Just as we got to the bottom of the sliderock, the sky opened up and it rained as hard as I've ever seen it rain in Colorado. So... rather than climbing up the brush like a ladder, now we're sliding down it... in buckets of rain.

At one point I lost my footing while holding the trunk of a young Aspen and slipped about ten feet down the side of the mountain. The whole tree bent over and I slid down the trunk, hanging from it with both hands, yelling, "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" like a girlie Tarzan.

About 30ft down the hill I heard my Aunt Tanya yell back, "WOOO HOOOOOOO!"

And then it began to hail on us. Yes, hail, as Colorado is wont to do in July at high elevations. If you're wondering why I didn't take any pictures of everyone rolling down the mountain in the rain... that's why.

But when the rain cleared up and we got back to base of the mountain, where the scrub oaks are only waist-high, and the mules ears smell so good, and everything is normal, and you don't feel like gravity is your enemy anymore, we looked behind us and saw that the peak where we had been standing not 20 minutes before had turned into a flash waterfall. There was another waterfall on the west side of the peak. Both of them were gone by the time we got back to the car.

I've never seen anything like it in my life.

Perhaps the best part is that, unanimously, when we got back to the cars, everyone in my family said, "that was awesome!!" Except maybe one rebel, who said something like, "God, I have to pee." But you get the point. They're good people, my folks. If I was ever in a pickle, they're the ones I'd want to be stuck with.