I've Been Feeling Chili Lately

I have a few cookbooks that look like they've seen better days. I don't particularly enjoy doing the math, but I've had this one for about 30 years. 

Anyone else have cookbooks that look like this? I'm sure you do or at least know someone--Grandma maybe? 

Where'd the cover go? I also have no idea why I wrote my name and address on the inside. (You won't find me there) Did I think someone might steal it? or I'd lose it? Where would I bring it to lose it?

I started off writing my faves in the front so I could find them again. That was fine and dandy until I ran out of room. Now the book just opens to my favourite recipes. Weird.

This is the Winnipegosis 30th Anniversary Cookbook 1990. I puchased it for $10 from my sister who lived there at the time with her family. It was a fundraiser for the Village of Winnipegosis, Manitoba.

It has been one of my dearly loved cookbooks!

My first chili recipe was thee best! It has definitely evolved over the years. And I still whip it up to this day.

Oh my goodness...my notes! Haha!

My dear chili recipe has been doubled, tripled and quadupled and travelled to countless potlucks ranging from family and friend get-togethers to Scouting events. It has been paired with bakery dinner rolls, homemade buns as well as buttermilk biscuits. It has been put on hot dogs, french fries and covered in different varieties of cheese. 

This chili recipe has been, and can be, modified to suit many personal tastes. 

If you want it spicy, add hot more sauce or chili peppers. If you want it without meat, smash a can or two of beans in place of beef. Or use ground turkey or pork and mix it with prepared mac and cheese.

Do whatever you want with it! In my experience, there has been nothing that can ruin this chili recipe. (Unless you don't put any spices in. Then I can't help you.)

When I first made this recipe, I wasn't wearing reading glasses and I didn't have any children. I was driving a 1980 Chevrolet Chevette and I was 21 years old. I was married, working full-time at a hardware store, and owned a little old bungalow in southern Manitoba. My dog's name was Bugs and she was a standard-sized dachshund. 

In hindsight, perhaps I was prepping for the Mennonite wife life? (Shudder)

There are many great chili recipes out there and I've tried a few but I always go back to using this one. (I have found another one that's pretty good. It uses a can of beer. It makes a batch big enough to feed a Mennonite family of 20. But, you know, Mennonites don't drink.) 

Without further ado, I present to you....

Chili

1 lb of ground beef, pork, or turkey

Onion, chopped, optional

1 can beans, kidney, black or pork and beans

2 tablespoons sugar

1 large can tomatoes, diced or crushed

1 tablespoon chili powder, heaping

Salt and pepper to taste

Garlic, minced or powder

1-2 tablespoons mustard, yellow and/or dijon

1-2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce, or to taste

Hot sauce, optional

1/4 cup chili sauce or to taste

Add chopped mushrooms or peppers if you like

Directions: Brown meat with onion. Drain. Add rest of ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes.

You can alter this recipe in so many ways. Add more spices and sauces you enjoy. Perhaps throw in shredded carrots or frozen peas. Leftovers freeze well for several months. 

Wait until I show you my Mennonite Cookbooks. Oba!

It's Taco Tuesday!

Sorry Taco Time...it's Taco Tuesday at our house too!

I used to make my own taco shells quite often...I'm referring to something I wrote in the last blog when I say I didn't want to drag all the hungry yard apes to the store with me because I forgot to get shells for tacos during my last shopping trip.

Here's my recipe for these....it's super duper easy and they taste great...but can be a little time consuming so start supper early or have supper late....unless you've got some help or do these earlier in the day.

Home Tortillas
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/4 cup margarine
-1/2 cup warm water

-Combine flour and salt in a bowl, cut in margarine, and then add the water into a well formed in the middle of the mixture. Combine into a dough and knead lightly.
-Divide into 12 equal parts. Lightly grease your hands with some margarine and roll each ball of dough with your hands to coat them with fat.
-Cover with a cloth and allow to rest for about 30 minutes.
-Roll each ball into a thin 8 inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Pull or stretch if necessary. Allow to rest by cooking the tortillas in the sequence they were rolled out.
-Cook on a hot ungreased griddle until brown speckles appear on the underside. Use spatula to squash down and flip to cook on both sides.
-Finished tortillas can be stacked between paper towels or the folds of clean tea towels.

Don't worry if they are not perfect circles because they just... won't.... be... but your family will love them anyway.

Now these tacos take some time to prepare and I usually enlist the help of somebody in the household to help me with these. OR I just buy taco shells when I do my weekly grocery shopping trip. (I'm much more organized than I used to be with shopping trips--when the kids were little I was such a scatter-brain!)
Our family likes the store bought shells in the different flavours like the spinach, cheese or tomato-flavoured shells.

BUT I always make my own taco seasoning...here's my recipe for this mixture and we love, love it! I double or triple this recipe, use about 3 heaping tablespoonfuls (we like it strong) to the meat and store the rest in a clean labeled canning jar with a tight lid. Keeps well for many months in the pantry.

Taco Seasoning
-6 teaspoons chili powder
-5 teaspoons paprika
-4 1/2 teaspoons cumin
-2 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
   or onion salt
-1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
-1 teaspoon garlic powder
-1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano

-Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Stir or whisk well and store in an airtight container in a cool dry place. Stays fresh for at least 6 months.
-When making chicken, beef or pork tacos--brown the meat in a frypan and drain. Add 1/2 cup water and enough taco seasoning to your preferred taste then simmer until most of the water has evaporated--about 10 minutes.

..and there we have it.
It only takes about 5 minutes of my time to mix up the seasoning and because we have tacos every month or two, it's well worth making a big batch of it and always having it on hand. It saves a few pennies and tastes much stronger than store-bought seasoning mix. We always had to buy two packages anyway to get what we wanted. I dislike bland food.

Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice....and Cheap

When the kids were small, I hated packing up everybody (and there was always a resistant baby to drag along) so I could just pick up a few things at the store just before supper time. I decided to make some of my own spices, syrups and mixes and with a little creativity could go a week without stopping at the grocery store except to quickly pick up milk, bread, and eggs. And those were often things I could ask Mike to pick up along the way from work.

I was raised by depression-era parents so I can get quite frugal when I want to. That is a skill in it's own.

Some of my favorite do-it-yourself mixes are things like seasoning salt (I have two such spice mixes that we enjoy), chocolate syrup, coffee creamer for my homemade iced coffee, sweet coffee mix, Italian seasoning, ranch dressing, and many many more. Some I've looked up on the internet and usually end up tweaking the recipe slightly. Some recipes I've found in old cookbooks like dog biscuits and chocolate pudding. It amazes me how we've forgotten how to make simple mixes instead of dishing out so much of our hard-earned money for something that doesn't taste that good.

Here's what I've been making a lot lately, since the weather has turned nice...finally....
It tastes a whole lot better than Timmy's iced coffee, in my opinion anyway, and you can make this as sweet or as strong as you'd like.

As you can see, the second batch I made this week is almost gone!

Iced Coffee:
     Put a heaping cupful of ground coffee in a clean 4 litre ice cream pail. Fill with cold tap water. Put the lid on the pail and let it sit on the counter overnight or at least 8 hours.
After the coffee and water has soaked, pour it through a few layers of cheesecloth. (I lay my cheesecloth in a strainer and set it on top of a pitcher.) Refrigerate.

Creamer:
     In a blender put one can of sweetened condensed milk, 1 3/4 cups of milk and 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract (I've tried rum extract and it tastes great too). Blend well and pour into container(s) and refrigerate. Lasts a week and a half at least (or until the milk expires). May have to shake before using.

Put a few ice cubes in a glass, fill with your cold coffee and top off with your homemade creamer. You can tweak it as you like by adding more coffee to make it stronger or you can use heavy cream instead of milk in the creamer to make it creamier.

We've been enjoying this home-brewed iced coffee for the last few years.....Mike and I seemed to have acquired a fetish for iced coffee but it was costing a bucket of money every week--something had to be done!!

Mennonites Are Us: Kielke und Schmontfat

That's pretty much the extent of my low German since I left southern Manitoba. I know a few other impressive words but that's all I'll amaze you with for now. I can understand low german better than I can speak it for when I was growing up in the Mennonite community in southern Manitoba, I wasn't required to actually speak it very often. I grew up in the village of Schanzenfeld which is about three km's south of Winkler (which is about 16 km's north of the Canadian/US border). It's not a colony, as some of you may think. Mennonites like us don't colonize....unless we were drinking too heavily. Today, if you drive through Schanzenfeld, it is the suburbs of the small city of Winkler.

There is the Mexican Mennonites and then there are us "modern?" Mennonites (for lack of a better word). The Mexican Mennonites are the ones whose ancestors came to Canada on the boat and then travelled to Mexico and then back to Canada. Many of the Mexican Mennonite women still dress in the old-style garb....the duek (kerchief or shawl on the head), simple dresses, socks with heeled shoes or sandals....you've seen them. You may have thought they were an off-shoot of the Hutterites. Most Mennonites dress like anybody else though and speak really good English....most of the time....unless we've been drinking heavily you may hear the word "oba" every now and again.

My family is of Mennonite descent but we weren't very good ones. We didn't do church and that seemed to define being true Mennonite in the Winkler community. Our family was from bad seed I think but I still call myself a Mennonite and we grew up eating plenty of the good food which I still make and we enjoy today.

BBQ'ing Farmer sausage.....from Winkler. Something about southern MB farmer sausage...there's nothing like it, I mean nothing. The farmer sausage sold here doesn't compare. I have to get my MB sausage on the black market. Well, not that bad. I get it "imported" from family members. When I run low, I send out an SOS.

This is Kielke. Also known as homemade pasta. It's not gluten-free by a long shot...more like injected with gluten. Gluten-intolerant people would just die at our house.

And this is Schmontfat. Also known as cream gravy. There's different variations of this stuff. I like mine with lots of pepper, parsley, salt, garlic powder and tabasco sauce. You non-Mennoniters would say it's close to an Alfredo Sauce. This would be another gluten-injected food item.

And there you have it. One heck of a Mennonite meal that we enjoy frequently when we have the right farmer sausage.

Any of my fellow Menno's who read this blog, please correct me if I'm wrong on any of my information. I didn't do extensive research.   ;)