Chili

My original plan today was to grill some meat this morning. As I was preparing to preheat my gas grill, I received a call from a person whose bike I was interested in buying off Craigslist, so instead of cooking, I hightailed it out of my house to meet them.

The bike was a bust, but I was wonderfully exposed to the fall weather. Glad I had brought a wool hat and fingerless gloves, in addition to dressing in a thermal shirt, t-shirt, and vest, I wandered about in the sunny, brisk morning.

After arriving back home this afternoon, I flipped on PBS, and watched someone cooking a pot of chili. He used two varieties of canned beans - red kidneys and refried beans.

I recalled that I had not only some ground beef that needed cooking, but I also possessed a can of black beans and a can of refried beans in my cupboard. Canned Gold!

I threw my ground beef (grass-finished, thankyouverymuch) into my cute yellow Dutch oven, to brown and sizzle away while I prepared other ingredients.


I opened the cans of beans, and retrieved several items out of my spice cabinet:



After the meat was almost completely cooked, I added the two cans of beans to the pot, as well as kosher salt, molasses, a good squirt of tomato paste, half of a leftover beer, and a couple of tablespoons' worth of Mole Ole! seasoning that I had freshly ground in my blade coffee grinder.

I also added several crushed cloves of garlic...


... and a whole small onion, chopped.

Then I set it to a low simmer:


I left it a little too long, ,because there was a layer of burned-on beans at the bottom when I went to retrieve the chili off the stove, but it smells amazing and I am looking forward to a few bowls of hearty warming chili!

NOTE: No, this is Not Paleo; according to the tenets of the Paleo diet, beans are not an encouraged food (not to mention the beer!) There's also not a ton of vegetables in this, so you definitely want to augment it to balance out your food choices. :)