whacker Chili. Ingredients: Lean hamburger - 6lbs Sweet Vidalia Onions - 1lb Sweet Red and Green Bell Peppers - 1lb Pinto Beans - (2) 13.5oz cans Garlic - 1 fresh bud Tomato Sauce - 1gal Brown Sugar - 2cups Masa Flour - 2oz Chili Powder - 4oz (yes, that's 5 alarm, but season to your taste) Serves 4 people. Preparation: Brown off all meat in pot on medium heat. Pour off grease and juice. Add peeled, whole garlic bulbs to flavor meat; remove before serving. Slice onions into chunks as they will reduce with simmering. Add onions, simmer for 30 minutes, Add brown sugar and simmer for 25 minutes. Slice bell peppers into rough 1" chunks, add to mixture. Simmer 30 minutes. Add tomato sauce and stewed tomatos (optional but I like them) and simmer for 30 minutes. Add masa (corn) to thicken and stir well. Add chili powder and simmer another 30 minutes. Add pinto beans 20 minutes before serving. Total cooking time of about 4 hours. Serves 4 large bowls with some great second helpings. Use saltines, nachos, tortilla chips; whatever tastes good to you and provides some 'crunch' with the chili. Chefs Note: I always find that chili — like everything else — gets a little better with age. By that I mean a few days of aging in the 'fridge and it becomes an elixir that can cure anything. Anything long term, unless frozen, will destroy the flavor of chili as chemical reactions will begin to render the ingredients inert. Yuk.

In the 1988 National Chili Cook-Offs in Laredo, Texas, I took 2nd Place to a guy named Wick Fowler, who had invented the art of hot chili. (He has 'quick chili' products for sale all over the US.) I used enough brown sugar that the judges wanted more and more tastes of the unusual concoction, which I obliged them every time. They were stunned, as were hundreds of other people, that an outsider could come in and walk away with 2nd Place. It was easy. And I've improved the original recipe just a wee bit since then.
I make five types of chili, depending upon the circumstances and people who will be feasting. Vegetarian chili — sounds awful, doesn't it? — but it is actually very, very good. The list of ingredients is somewhat longer than traditional Tex-Mex, but the flavor and consistency is awesome. Just because it doesn't have meat in it, doesn't mean it's not good chili.
In an upcoming Journal, I'll provide two or three vegetarian chili recipes that I've tried and like very much. If you don't like the results, mail the remainder to me in a sealed container, and I'll eat it.

Holiday Blues.

I read a lot about depression over the Holidays — from Thanksgiving to Christmas through New Year — and often wonder why that is the case with so many people at this time of year.
Doctors theorize — and they're good at theorizing — that it's the concurrence of three Holidays all in the same close time frame, and specifically Holidays meant for family gatherings, that affect all people the most. The greatest number of people beset by these woes are 1) singles without partners, 2) the elderly without immediate families, and 3) those who hate being confined to their home because of the Winter weather.
There are many ways to combat this problem. While browsing through some on-line magazines, I found this one: Holiday Depression Guide. It helps define the disorder and recommends ways of helping to cope. Maybe someone you know has the affliction; send them the address of that Website and it could help explain things to them.
I've never experienced that phemonema, but I understand it can be a very powerful problem for many thousands of people. It's a shame to allow it to rule one's life. Go visit that URL and see if they can help make things a bit brighter.

Happy Holidays.

In case anybody's driving instead of flying around the lower 48 this Christmas and New Year's Holiday Season, here's the latest National Hi-way Forecasts for that period. Drive safely if you do.

A White Christmas?

It beginning to look like it. Really.
Early Thursday morning a Winter Storm blew through the south-central Pennsylvania area with a fury we haven't see since The Blizzard of '96, way back on January 8th, 1996. Actually, this is the first snow we've had, so that's all I have to compare against.
The Plains states and midwest had been hit hard on prvious days with record-setting snow and cold, but our storm came up from the Gulf of Mexico (thanks, amigo!) and turned into a nor'easter; the very worst kind.
The warnings were coming in from the Internet all day on Wednesday; my landscape crew had just finished the last job for the year. After they'd returned, we readied the equipment - a John Deere 675B SkidLoader and a John Deere 955 Tractor - for snowplowing duty. (With that kind of equipment, one would think I had stock in JD; I don't.)
After staying up until midnight doing work on the 586 Pentium PC, I saw the storm arrive. The next morning at 5am — the cats let me sleep an extra hour — it wasn't even a small blizzard. Nothing. I have a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee V8 LTD, and it's an easy match for up to 2ft of snow. Hell, last year in The Blizzard, I made it through 3ft drifts. The 5ft snow banks stopped me, but that's another story.













Live Trees vs Dead Trees.

There's just a few days to go before Christmas and, if you haven't gotten a tree yet, don't cave and get a cut, dead Christmas tree. And don't buy any Asian artifical tree; they're made by slave-labor children getting little or no money per day for their efforts in a concentration-like camp. Wait, there's a better way. Get a Live Christmas Tree, take it inside for one week and then take it outside and plant it. Enjoy the tree for many years to come.
Read a piece I wrote last week for David Siegel — HTML Terrorist and Web design proponent — for his Weekly Journal. I was glad to share what I knew.
See you next year!

J o h nS h e l l e y