Waiting for Rain

By this time tomorrow, with any luck at all, I'll be done with my latest batch of chili and onto finishing up the Chinese Food.

According to the little pamphlet that comes with the nicotine patches I should be enjoying food more now, which I very well may be. This is around the time, they say, when food begins tasting better, and if it weren't for the sheer quantity of it that I've been shoveling in, there's a good chance that I'd notice something like that. As it is, what I'm noticing is that this batch of chili isn't one I'm likely to mention ever again.

I screwed up with the tomatoes, which are pretty important. I used a can of whole tomatoes instead of crushed ones, or diced ones, and spent a good part of the simmering time trying to cut, slice, and halve the floating red eyes with the side of a wooden spoon, which was about as effective as you can imagine. I even tried mashing them, hoping to turn them into a thick paste, but the mushy red eggs stood up pretty good to that assault, too.

In the end, you could easily count the number of tomatoes that were in the can since each was a spoonful unto itself. The rest of the stuff in the chili wasn't bad and the pot didn't end up too hot or spicy, but I'll go to my grave before I learn anything about how salty or not it was. All the time I was cooking it -- hell, for the past month -- I've been supplementing my breathing with sunflower seeds, which may also explain why I may not be able to taste anything. Even the "lower sodium" variety, which I mix with the ranch, BBQ, or jalapeno flavored bags, is pretty salty judging by my sudden fondness for all things liquid, so I don't know if the chili is too salty, not salty enough, or just right.

I may not make chili during the rainstorm scheduled to begin tomorrow because I also splurged on some Chinese food. It's been about the only prepared food I've had in the past year or so, a bi-monthly delicacy woven with a handful of lunches, and I'm well enough known by the women at the Hunan Kitchen or whatever it's called, that they smile big and wave vigorously when I approach to order. I mangled out my best imitation of a white guy saying Happy New Year in Chinese this time around, but I don't trust my accent and they may have thought I was asking about their scarves or the color of the wall tiles.

Anyway, I don't know. Maybe I'll just give up making chili.