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Beans, Beef n’ Brrr
February is almost over, but it’s still a bit chilly. 🥶 When that’s the case, it’s a great time to make some chili! 🍲 This is easier since we got our order of farm-fresh beef from Miller Charm Farm. 🚜 Big thanks to the Miller family for providing this great service.
Beans
My mother was an enthusiastic chef but wildly disorganized, and often preferred purchasing yet another jar of mace or chili powder rather than having to hunt down its last incarnation. ~Janet Fitch
Let’s just call it for what it is.
Noodles are just too easy to make and put in darn near everything.
The problem is, I don’t need all the extra carbs.
It’s time to cut down on that and put more beans and legumes back on the table.
I love lentils and beans as a smart alternative since they’re bringing protein and fiber that you don’t find as much of in noodles.
They still have that neutral, background-filler sensation that noodles give you, but provide a more consistent blood sugar balance.
Beef
We Tried Four Celebrity Chili Recipes To Find The Best One
Technically, you can do chili without meat, but why in God’s name would you want to?
It’s the balance of high-quality fiber in the beans and fats in the meat that provide the comfort food profile we’re seeking.
That being said, we’re faced with another choice: ground or cubed?
With beef as tender as what we purchased from the Miller’s farm, this presents a serious choice.
What kind of chili is going to make the February chill stay safely outside?
Do we want the savory essence of the ground beef surrounding the beans and contributing to a delicious spoonful?
Do we want the marvelous, velvety cubes to complement the bite of the beans for a perfect fork-edible chili?
Only you can decide what you’re in the mood for, but with a freezer full of farm-fresh beef, I know I’ve got the option to try it both ways before old man winter lets go at last.
Brrr
As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it’s laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe – we are happiest when we are creating. ~Gary Hamel
Amen, brother. I am, indeed, happiest when I’m creating.
And have I ever been creating lately…
I’m closing in on the end of The Sentinels: Price of Engagement and I’ve been doing a super-geeky deep dive into police and prosecutorial procedures in order to maintain the level of verisimilitude that the The Sentinelsverse specializes in.
This second book in the series serves as a braided arc of four central characters who, unfortunately, have a lot to go through before the whole thing is over.
I forget who I heard it from, but one of my writing vlogs mentioned the idea of story as putting your character(s) up a tree and throwing rocks at them until it’s time to get them back down again.
Oh, these poor people 😂, each of them has their own special vector of suffering to endure and you definitely would not want to be in any of their shoes.
While this central braid of the travails of Claudia, Tanda, Meirhe and David forms the spine of the book, this braid is embedded in the weave of a city going about its business around them.
Will they come out stronger? Hard to say. I’d like to think so, but this is fiction and nobody stays happy indefinitely.
You may be thinking: Rob, you’re somewhat demented if this is how your imagination expresses story.
It’s a fair cop, but you’ll find that this is how most authors express story.
Whether you’re a full-on plotter or primarily a discovery writer like me, the key thing is for us to really put our characters through the wringer in order to really examine the human condition or make some observation about society.
It’s not like none of my characters are ever happy.
Happiness is largely determined by their life choices.
And isn’t that true of all of us?
Some of us live comfy little hobbit lives of dull security and streaming entertainment. That’s actually my base state when I’m not writing.
Some of us are a bit more adventurous or willing to endure hardship for more meaningful rewards.
This is the domain of first responders, therapeutic specialists and anyone willing to look into the abyss on behalf of others.
As heart-rending as their lives can be because of that choice, it can also be tremendously rewarding because they literally get to save people or put them back together.
That is a reward in itself for the adventurous among us.
The world is made up of both kinds and everything in between. It’s the author’s job to present these people effectively in order to tell a coherent story.
I think I’m getting there with mine. I’ll find out when I’m ready to publish.
That’s all for today. See you back on Wednesday for freezer burn…