Football Chili

Check out wisdenfam.blogspot.com for this amazing chili recipe. I mentioned this chili in an earlier pre-Christmas post. It's delicious and easy to make.

Football Chili

2 pounds ground beef

1 pound Hot Italian sausage

4 (15 ounce) cans chili beans, drained

2 (28 ounce) cans diced tomatoes with juice

1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste

1 large yellow onion, chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

2 green chili peppers, seeded and chopped

1 tablespoon bacon bits

4 cubes beef bouillon

1/2 cup beer

1/4 cup chili powder

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons hot sauce (Tapatio)

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon white sugar

In a large skillet, brown the ground beef and hot Italian sausage. As the meat browns add ALL other ingredients to a Crock Pot. Drain the excess fat from beef and hot sausage and add to Crock Pot. Stir everything together. Simmer on low for 8 to 10 hours (the best) or on high for 3 to 5 hours. Serve with Frito's and shredded Cheddar cheese. This recipe makes great leftovers and I also like a little sour cream with my chili.

Happy New Year's

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. And that's all I'm going to say about that. After four days of being snowed in and living in Medieval like conditions I'm not really feeling the holiday cheer.

But I'm super excited for New Year's. I'm old enough to actually go out. As always my friends and I are looking for a laid-back place with great food and a fun atmosphere. The small amount of online searching I've done has only revealed clubs. Not exactly what I'm looking for--the hip-hop, grinding scene is so not me.

Any suggestions?

Big E's

In this holiday season, it's easy to spend a lot of time with family and friends. So I spent the weekend with my super-awesome sister and her adorable family. Her husband, Big E requested I write a post on them. So here it is!

Over at Big E's they've done a lot of work to teach me about food. We have them to thank for my love of alcohol, too. Big E has loved to cook since the first day I met him and he made me a fabulous steak dinner. (Six years later and I still remember it.)

Well, this weekend they treated me to some delicious chili. It simmered for about three hours in the crock-pot and was full of flavor. The recipe calls for hamburger and sausage which blend really well with the spicy tomato sauce. I also saw some beer go into the pot and it was delicious.

Oh we also had some delicious margaritas. These guys are so good they even have margarita salt in their cupboards. Plus, they're more than happy to cut the alcohol content for the light-weights in the room.

Let's see what other yummy goodness did we have? Oh yeah, lemon spaghetti and salmon. I'll post the recipe for lemon spaghetti shortly. It's very good, it's a nice taste of summer in the middle of a snowstorm. I don't have the recipe for the salmon or the sauce that goes with, but I promise they were very good. The salmon was flaky and moist while the sauce added a nice kick of flavor.

Well, that sums up my weekend at Big E's. And with a promise of financial backing they might open up a restaurant so everyone can enjoy their hospitality and excellent food.

Wow! I'm slow.

I just want to take a moment to apologize for my complete absence from the blogosphere the past two weeks. I blame finals and professors and finals and work and finals. There that should cover it. I promise I will post something soon. Now that I have the time to enjoy what I eat.

Big City Soup

Chicken Curry Soup
Who knew chicken curry would make such a wonderful soup? Not me. But apparently the guys at Big City were already knew it would be an excellent combination of flavor and texture.

My experience at Big City Soup was at the original location (235 South 400 West) proved to me why I love Salt Lake Lake City and food. Big City is just around the corner from my office and an easy walking distance in four inch heels. Always, a giant plus!

The staff was very friendly and more than helpful. Once I explained I had never been there before the server was more than happy to give me free samples of all the soups available. As soon as I sampled the chicken curry I knew it was the soup I wanted.

Layered with flavors including curry, scallions and chicken. The soup was full of delicious chunks of chicken, onion and carrot. I can't get over how delicious this soup was. I'm having difficulty coming up with the words to describe the blend of sweet, sour and spicy, but it was there and it was perfect.

The one downfall of the food was the ciabatta roll. Umm...I'm not sure, but even for ciabatta it seemed stale and hard. Plus it was definitely lacking flavor. I'll admit I haven't eaten a whole lot of ciabatta in my time. And I don't think I'll be eating a whole lot more in the future.

Oh and did I mention gift certificates? That's right. Oh yeah, it was free to me! YAY! Does a place get any better? I was lucky enough to have a $10 gift certificate from my work so I was happy to pay their $6.50 for the soup and bread.

In all honesty I thought it was a little expensive, but completely worth it. The soup was amazing! The help was incredible! And being so close to my office I will definitely be back.

After all, I still have $3.50 on my gift card. What are you soup stories?

The Background

I owe a quick thank you to my wonderful sister, Amber for my new background. Thanks, sis! You've always got my back! I love you.