🚀 go-pugleaf

  BW> From: bwalsh@access1.digex.net (Bill Walsh)

  BW> KGreenberg <kgreenberg@aol.com> wrote:
  BW> 
  > Actually. I've tried them both and was rather disappointed by Hard
  > Times. It's not that I won't go into Old Town, but what exactly is the
  > point of spending 30 minutes fighting traffic on a Saturday night if you
  > have other plans anywhere else?
  > 
  BW> Disappointed by Hard Times? Well, to each his own.
  BW> 
  BW> Perhaps you made the mistake of ordering the Texas-style chili (ground
  BW> beef 'n' grease)? Here are the Hard Times musts: Onion rings to start
  BW> (and use the hot-pepper vinegar on them), then Cincinnati chili,
  BW> four-way or five-way (I prefer the former). With a Hard Times Select
  BW> Lager or two, of course.

Yeesh.  CINCINNATI chili?  The stuff with beans and cinnamon in it?  Are you
one of those Moonies?

The best chili in this part of the country comes from (in all modest and
honesty) my own kitchen.  I trim /extremely/ lean, large hunks of beef until
they're darned near fat-free, grind them coarse,
one-time-through-the-grinder-only, brown them, add roughly one medium onion per
two pounds of beef, and then throw in as many Wick Fowler's Two Alarm Chili
kits as it takes to bring the pot up to about the three-alarm level, using the
instructions on the package.  By traditional standards the chili isn't quite
greasy enough, but nobody has ever complained about that.  Only one person has
ever eaten more than about two pounds of it at one sitting (with the rice and
grated cheese and sour cream I serve with it), so I usually make only 10-15
pounds at a time.