Christmas Chili ~ A Green Chili Recipe

Yesterday, I made a big pot of Christmas Chili for dinner.  It had been snowing all day and it was a good night to have a nice warm bowl of chili for dinner.  This is a green chili but it has red tomatoes in it which gives it a kind of red and green Christmas look – hence the name!

Christmas Chili

Here is the recipe:

Christmas Chili

- 2 to 3 pounds of ground pork
- 1 bunch of green onions or Mexican onions ( they are like green onions only bigger on the bulb)
- 3 Anaheim Chilies (or whatever sort of chilies you like, I like to use the roasted green chilies that we get in the fall and freeze but we’ve used those all up)
- 2 cups pre-cooked beans of your choice (I used adzuki beans, canned beans are fine – drain them)
- 3 cans chicken broth or use chicken stock
- 1 can water (if you use broth)
- 2 cans fire roasted chopped tomatoes (or 1 large can)
- 3 tablespoons green chili powder
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon crushed green chili
- 3/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

Chop the onions including the green stalks, clean seeds from chilies and chop.

In a large pot, brown the ground pork with the chopped onions, chopped chilies, green chili powder, cumin and crushed green chili until the pork is fully cooked. Add the chicken broth and water, bring to a boil, turn down heat and add beans and tomatoes. Cover (slightly crack lid) and simmer for 15 minutes, add salt to taste (I always wait till I simmer it a bit to add any salt to see for sure how salty it is going to turn out). Simmer for another 15 to 20 minutes.

This recipe makes a big pot of chili that will serve 5 or 6 people very generously. It is good garnished with grated cheese and a few blue corn chips.

It might be hard to find the green chili powder and crushed green chili in some places.  It is available in most grocery stores in New Mexico.

You can click on the picture for a larger view.

Pumpkin Pie Disaster

We spent Thanksgiving at Darrin and Maura’s home – technically, they are dear friends but actually they are much, much more like family.  They are more like our grown children than plain old friends and their children are our grandchildren.  Being a part of their extended family is one of the things for which we are very thankful not only on Thanksgiving but every day.

My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was to make enough dessert for a large, extended family gathering.  So, I decided to make four pumpkin pies (as many as fit in my oven).  Usually my pies turn out well, I always make my own pastry and don’t have any problems with that turning out the way it should.   These four pies just didn’t turn out well at all – not because of the pastry but because I put more than twice as much sugar in the pumpkin mixture as the recipe called for.

Pumpkin Pie Failure

It was late on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving and I was trying to be quick about making the pies.  I didn’t bother to put my reading glasses on and thought the recipe said each pie needed 1 3/4 cup of sugar so I multiplied that by 4 and put 7 cups of sugar in for the 4 pies.  They should have finished baking in an hour but it took 2 1/2 hours for them to get firm.  By that time, I knew something was wrong – not just the long baking time but the smell was dreadful.  Instead of that wonderful pumpkin pie smell wafting from the oven there was a sickeningly sweet, burnt sugar smell filling the house.   A sticky sugar syrup was bubbling out of the pies and all over my oven, when I took the pies out of the oven the syrup was at the hard crack stage making long crispy strings as I lifted them out and put them on the counter.  It was a mess.  Anyway, I looked at the recipe again to see what on earth might have gone wrong (with glasses on) and saw that each pie only needed 3/4 cup of sugar!  For the 4 pies, I should have only used 3 cups of sugar and I used 7!

No one tasted these pies but I bet they tasted really awful.  They certainly smelled awful.  I put them out in the garage before I went to bed so they would quit stinking up the house and they were thrown out Thanksgiving morning.

Coconut Cranberry Bars

Thanksgiving morning, I baked Coconut Cranberry Bars to bring for dessert.  Luckily, I had all the ingredients they needed and they were quick and easy to make.  I had seen the recipe on the Land O’Lakes site several days earlier.  They turned out nicely and tasted great. 

Thanksgiving Dessert

Here is a link to the recipe:

Coconut Cranberry Bars

They turned out so well and people seemed to like them so much that I made them again to take to my Knitting Night on Tuesday.  Everyone there seemed to like them, too – at least they ate them and even asked for the recipe!

Coconut Cranberry Bars For Knitting Night

The Land O’Lakes site has many good recipes, they are easy to find and the pages don’t have any pop-ups or weird ads.  I’ve had good luck with any of the recipes I’ve tried from their recipe collection.

To see more pictures from Thanksgiving, here is a link to a set of pictures on Flickr:

Thanksgiving 2009

You can click on any of the pictures in this post to see a larger version.

This, That and The Other

This blog post is kind of a mixed bag - definitely a reflection of how life has been lately!

I started on a quick. new knitting project – a hat for my husband.  It is based on a childrens’ hat pattern – Ear Cozy Hat by Fiber Trends - I redid the math to make the hat in a large adult size.  I’ve made this pattern numerous times in the small sizes.  It is really nice because it covers the ears and keeps them warm – however, the ear flaps are much nicer than most ear flap hats because they are made with short rows and don’t hang down strangely and they don’t need ties to keep them in place.

Jack Hat Beginning

The wool is lovely, Karabella Aurora Melange - it is so soft yet bouncy feeling and is 100% extrafine Merino Wool that is machine washable, always a plus for a hat.

In other knitting news, I finished up the Pet Bed I was knitting with Knit Picks bulky, hand dyed Wool of The Andes in the Island Breeze colorway.  It took three skeins.  Now, I need to felt it and see how it looks.  I’m hoping the fabric gets a lot thicker and the sides will stand up on their own.

Pet Bed Unfelted

This is the second Pet Bed I’ve knitted – the first one never ended up being felted because my dog, Gidget, likes it just the way it is.  She spends a lot of time sleeping on it and hates me to pick it up off the floor. There’s a picture of that in this post:  She Likes It .  For the first Pet Bed, I used a felted bowl pattern and just made it bigger.  I wasn’t totally happy with the how the bottom turned out, so, for this bed I came up with my own pattern that has 9 segments to form the circular bottom.  It seems to lie nice and flat.  After I felt it and see if it turns out well, I’ll write up the pattern and make it available on this blog.

Yesterday, I baked some Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins, they are based on a recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins that Mary Jo baked recently for our knitting night.  I altered them a bit to make them more cake-like by adding less oil, one more egg, more flour, more cinnamon, a bit of nutmeg and a bit of milk.  They turned out well – not very sweet but very good.

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins

Finally, I wanted to share this picture of our two grandsons having an after school snack and playing Nintendo DS – they bicker so much that it was wonderful to see them cooperating with each other!  You can see how much they really do love each other even though they tend to bicker over everything.

Brothers Cooperating

You can click on any of the pictures in this post to see a larger view.

Carrot Ginger Cookies and a New Knitting Project

Carrot Ginger Cookies

These Carrot Ginger Cookies I made today turned out very well. They have lots of finely grated carrots in them along with freshly grated ginger. They are very light and delicate tasting – the fresh ginger gives them such a nice flavor. Even though they have LOTS of carrots in them – they really don’t taste like carrots. I think they will go very nicely with a cup of tea.

I rolled the balls of dough in coarse Demerara sugar before baking – next time, I will use a finer sugar. The crunchy, strong taste of the Demerara sugar kind of overpowered the cookie.

Carrot Ginger Cookies

1 1/4 cups white sugar
1 cup butter or margarine
1 egg + 1 egg white (if you double recipe, just use three eggs)
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup finely grated carrot (about 3 normal sized carrots)
1 1/2 tsp. freshly grated ginger root (about 1 small root)
3 cups flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla. Stir in the carrots and ginger until well blended. Mix the cream of tartar, soda and salt with the flour. Stir in the flour a cup or so at a time and mix well.

Roll the dough into 1 1/2 inch balls. If desired, roll balls in sugar before placing on baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 – 14 minutes until slightly browned and top springs back if touched.

The dough is quite soft, it might help to refrigerate it before rolling into balls. I usually make a double recipe (or even triple) of cookie dough and only bake one or two pans and then put the rest of the dough in the fridge in a tightly sealed container or bag. That way, you can bake a pan or two every day or so and always have fresh cookies on hand.

*****

In other news – I didn’t have to report for Jury Duty today (Friday)! It was such a relief – I was dreading it so much. I had called the phone number on the summons earlier in the day on Thursday and then again around 4pm to check on the status of the trial and the recorded message said the trial was still scheduled. So, I had started getting everything ready for the next day – clothes, charge cell phone, get purse packed up with the needed stuff, etc. For a couple of days, I had been trying to think of a small knitting project to bring along in the hopes I might knit to fill in the tedious hours of jury selection – finally decided to make the Shetland Shopper Market Bag. My friend, Emmy, knitted this bag and it turned out very well. So, I cast on for the bag with Adara (cotton/linen blend) from Elann and was happily knitting away on it when my husband came home from work.

He asked if I had called to check on the status of the trial, I told him I had and that it had not been cancelled. So, he called the number to check again and it WAS cancelled! I was in disbelief, it must have been cancelled at the last minute. I even called the number myself to make sure it really had been cancelled! What a relief – it seems like when you get all ready and prepared for something, then it never happens.

So, I shall think of the Shetland Shopper as my lucky knitting project!

Shetland Shopper Market Bag - Beginning

I felt so happy and relieved today that I decided to bake the Carrot Ginger Cookies, had been meaning to try them for a while. It was originally a recipe for Bunny Carrot Cookies that I modified quite a bit.

You can click on the pictures for a larger view.

Roasted Green Chili

It is the time of year for roasting green chillies, they are very popular in this part of the country (southern Colorado and northern New Mexico).  Every little grocery store has a chili roaster outside and there are people who just set up chili roasting equipment alongside the road to sell the roasted green chili, the local farmer’s markets usually sell them as well.  The smell is wonderful, it is so evocative of the southwest. 

It is amazing how much the chilies shrink after they are roasted – what starts out as a huge burlap bag filled with fresh green chilies comes out of the roaster and fits into a much smaller plastic bag for you to take home.

Just out of the roaster.

My husband helped me get our batch ready to freeze.  We set them out on paper towels to drain – after roasting, they build up a lot of fluid in the plastic bag they were placed in right out of the roaster.  Then we put 5 or 6 chilies in quart size freezer bags.  I rolled these down tightly and sealed the bag and then placed them in another quart bag and rolled that down tightly as well before placing in the freezer.

Preparing chilies for freezing.

They thaw quickly when you want to use the frozen chilies.  After thawing, you clean the chili and then chop it up to use on just about anything!  Roasted green chili tastes good with so many things – it is great on top of any sort of meat (kind of like mushrooms on a steak), it tastes wonderful in omelets or scrambled eggs, you can put it in any sort of soup or stew.  It’s also a very tasty topping for burgers or sandwiches of any sort.  Of course, it makes fabulous green chili!  We use a LOT of green chili!

Click on the pictures for a larger view.

Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread

Recently, I purchased two Nordicware Shortbread pans.  They are very nice heavy pans made of cast aluminum.  For some strange reason, I have this “thing”  (not enough of a “thing” to really be a fetish) for pans and kitchen equipment – I love to get kitchen stuff and then end up not using a lot of it.

Shortbread Pans

So, I decided to make some Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread to try out the new pans – before they just became some more dust collecting clutter in my kitchen.

Pressing Shortbread Dough In Pans

This is the recipe I  used:

Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread

1 Pound of Butter – Softened (Two Sticks – be sure to use Real Butter NOT margarine)

1 Cup of Powdered Sugar (Sometimes called Confectioner’s or Icing Sugar)

2 Cups of Flour

2 Heaping Tablespoons Freshly Grated Lemon Rind or Zest (You can use even more if you’d like)

2 Tablespoons Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice

1 Heaping Tablespoon Poppy Seeds

(One large lemon should be enough – grate the skin and then squeeze it)

Microplane Grater/Zester

In preparation, grate the zest (skin) on the lemon, I love to use my Microplane Grater/Zester for this – it makes short work of making mountains of lemon zest!  After grating the skin cut the lemon in half and squeeze out the juice.

Cream the butter and powdered sugar together in a large bowl.  Add the lemon zest and juice and the poppyseeds.  Start mixing in the flour a bit at a time.  I usually just use my hands to knead the flour in.  Keep kneading until you get a nice smooth dough.

Press the dough evenly into the shortbread pan – or, into a 9 inch square or round cake pan or pie pan.  If you aren’t using a shortbread pan, you can sprinkle some granulated or coarse sugar on the top before baking.

Put into a preheated 300 degrees F oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes until slightly browned around the edges.

Out of the Oven

If using shortbread pans let the pans cool 5 minutes or so before removing the shortbread.  To remove, put a cutting board over the pan – hold the cutting board and pan together and turn them upside down quickly. Set them down on the counter and lift the pan off the shortbread – it should come right off. Shortbread has so much butter that is never sticks.  Cut along the lines left from the pan with a sharp knife while still warm – it will crumble if you wait till it is totally cool to cut it.  If you are using 9 inch square or round pan – let the pan cool a few minutes than cut the shortbread into pieces with a sharp knife, then when the shortbread is cool recut along the same lines and remove from the pan.  It will crumble if you wait until it is completely cool to cut it.  Round pans look nice cut into wedges.

Shortbread from Snowflake Pan

Shortbread from darker Pan

As you can see from the pictures – I made a double recipe.  This Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread is really good – it is tender and has a wonderful lemon flavor with that nutty taste of poppy seeds!  It stores well in a tin or plastic container with a lid that seals tightly. Put some parchment or wax paper in the container before storing the shortbread – plain white paper towel works, too. 

Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread

Enjoy your Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread!

This recipe shouldn’t need any adjustment for altitude.  I live and bake at a high altitude (7,605 feet) and it turned out perfectly.  Since shortbread has no levening - baking it at a lower altitude shouldn’t make much difference.  The baking time might be less at a lower altitude.  It took 35 minutes to bake this.

Cookies

Cookies are my favorite things to bake. I like to make triple and double recipes and bake one or two pans of 16 cookies and store the rest of the dough tightly covered in the fridge and make some more the next day and the next and the next….. It is so handy having the dough in the fridge – you can make a fresh batch of cookies to bring to someone in just a few minutes.

My grandkids love to “bake cookies” – they like the kind of dough you roll in balls and then roll around in sugar before putting them on the pan. They can put the pans of cookies in the oven and help take them out and use a spatula to take them off the pan – it makes us happy to make cookies together.

Tonight, I baked up the last of the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie dough in the fridge and mixed up a big batch of Ginger Cookies and baked one pan of them and put the rest of the dough in the fridge.

Butter Mints

Last night, I made up a batch of Butter Mints for a housewarming party our friends are having on Saturday.  The color turned out to be a much more vibrant yellow than I was anticipating but they taste delicious!  I much prefer butter mints to the cream cheese mints – they get a firmer texture and have a lovely buttery taste.

They are quick and easy to make if you don’t use the rubber molds – that adds more time but they are very cute when shaped in molds.  They store well in the fridge or freezer and make the perfect After Dinner Mint when you’ve had guests for dinner (or even just yourself for dinner!).

This recipe also makes great wedding mints.

Butter Mints

1 Stick of Butter (1/4 lb) – don’t use margarine, only real butter

1 tablespoon Half & Half or Heavy Cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla (the clear vanilla doesn’t add any color)

1/2 teaspoon butter extract or flavoring (this is available in clear as well)

1/8 teaspoon (scant) spearmint oil – you can use the mint oil of your choice, there are several kinds such as wintergreen, peppermint and creme de menthe

Food Coloring of your choice – the gel food colorings work way better and only take a tiny amount

2 pounds (1 bag) powdered sugar

 

Soften the butter in the microwave until is is very soft but not totally melted (1 minute in my microwave), add the Half & Half, vanilla and butter extract, food coloring and mint oil and about 1/2 cup of the powdered sugar.  Whip with a wire whip until very smooth and creamy.  Add powdered sugar bit by bit until a dough forms – I usually end up dumping it out on my counter so I can knead the sugar in more easily.  When you get a nice pliable, easily workable dough put it in a plastic bag to keep it moist.

If you wish to make the quick style mints, take a small amount of mint dough out of the bag and work a bit more powdered sugar into it – then roll it into a rope with your hands on the counter and then cut it in little sections with a sharp knife. Place the little sections on a piece of wax paper or parchment to dry.  Keep doing this till all the dough is used up. Leave the mints to dry for a few hours and then store in container in the fridge for a week or so or in the freezer for a month or so.

If you wish to mold the mints, take a small amount of the mint dough out of the bag and break off a piece about the size of a marble and roll it into a ball in your hands, roll the marble sized ball of dough in some fine granulated sugar and then press into a mold and unmold immediately and place the mint on some wax paper or parchment paper to dry.  Sometimes, there is a bit of excess around the unmolded mint that is easy to trim off once the mints are dry.  Keep doing this till all the dough is used up – it can take a long time but they look lovely.  After the mints have dried for a few hours store in a container in the fridge for a week or so or in the freezer for a month or so.  It works best to store them in layers separated by parchment.

Here are some more pictures of previous batches of mints I’ve made:

These ones were for a wedding.

These were for a wedding as well.  I was trying for a burgandy color but this was as close as I could get.

These ones were for After Dinner Mints at home.  My husband really likes these mints and he is not a candy sort of person.

Another Birthday

On Thursday evening we went to a birthday celebration for the daughter of our close friends – she turned eight.  Her Mom fixed a great dinner for everyone – there were almost 20 people there!  Afterwards, she opened her presents and then everyone had cake and ice cream.  She had a Hannah Montana cake – it seems like all the little girls around here really like Hannah Montana.  Since it was a week night there wasn’t much time for anything else but we did get to play a few card games with the kids.  They love to play Go Fish, Crazy Eights and Old Maid.

I brought two salads for the dinner.  One was a Wilted Spinach Salad that is very easy to fix and tastes great – I think so anyway!  The whole salad was eaten so others must have liked it, too.  It doesn’t look that wonderful in the picture as I had a hard time cutting up the boiled eggs – I grabbed a dull knife and it kind of mutilated them rather than slicing them neatly.  You have to make this salad at the last minute as it needs to be served as soon as possible after making it to stay warm – so, I was in a dreadful hurry with the eggs as we were already a few minutes late.

Anyway, it is easy to make – you need a lot of spinach, I used a huge sack that was about 14″ x 14″ stuffed with spinach.  You also need some bacon (1/2 a pound of so); one bunch of green onions; pepper; vinegar of your choice and several  hard boiled eggs for garnish.  Cut the bacon into small pieces (I used a scissors – so much quicker than a knife); chop the green onions and then cook the green onions and bacon in a large heavy pot until the bacon is cooked.  Stir in some pepper (1/2 tsp) and about 1/3  cup of vinegar – I used a combination of  white wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar.  Let this come to a boil and then start putting in the spinach.  Fill the pot with spinach and stir it until the spinach wilts down and then fill the pot with spinach again and stir it until the spinach wilts down – keep doing this until  you use up all your spinach or you think there is enough.  Put the pot contents into a serving bowl and garnish with boiled eggs – serve as soon as possible.

This salad would be good for people who are eating low carbs – the bacon and eggs have fat and protein but not many carbs.  It must be pretty nutritious as well because it has a LOT of spinach in it!