Mission Accomplished

Last night around 8 o’clock I received a text from my wife where she gave me my assignment for today…

This recipe was from the famed Chelsea’s Messy Apron website, the place where every recipe is amazing and never ever fails. So, no pressure at all. As the name suggests, this was a crockpot meal, which meant that I had to put everything together in the morning, before my doctor’s appointment at 10:30. As I read through the narrative online I began to worry that perhaps Pam had bitten off a bit more than I had the capacity to chew. The prose on these cooking websites is full of befuddling jargon that non cooks like me find difficult to comprehend. But even after I felt I understood enough to get started, the ingredient layout was a bit overwhelming…

As you can see, this was a meat-heavy dish. There was bacon, ground beef, ground chuck, and Italian sausage. Then there were the seven spices that needed to be introduced at various strategic moments in the process. I was warned—rather ominously—against going overboard on the chili pepper and to consider removing the inside “membranes” and seeds from the jalapeño. I was also given the completely worthless suggestion to “take care to not overdo the sugar” without tasting it first. While the recipe made the claim that the preparation time for this dish was 30 minutes, by the time I had everything stirred in to the crockpot, a manic hour had passed and the kitchen looked like there had been an explosion and I had been the only survivor.

Now it was just a matter of waiting eight hours for all the ingredients to get to know one another, to meld their unique flavors and textures into one cohesive edible dish that would not send us rushing to Urgent Care.

To my great relief, my mission was accomplished. The chili was sensational.