Semi-Homemade Chili

No harm in taking a little help from the grocery store and letting someone else measure the spices for you so you don’t have to buy a whole jar for one use. I’m such a saver.

My family has been eating chili with spices from a box for many, many years. The box is Wick Fowler’s 2 Alarm Chili. It’s found by the taco seasonings. I like this chili in a box because it is really just spices, and they are all labeled so you can control how much you add, like of salt. The spices are chili pepper, red pepper, salt, oregano, garlic/onion, masa flour for thickening, and probably something else. Not too harmful! You add your choice of meat, 8 oz of tomato sauce and 16 oz water. It’s a winning dish for our family and husband approved every time! We usually eat it on New Year’s Day with cornbread.

On a very hot October day, we decided to have our first chili of the season. At least we’re pretending it’s cooler temperatures by eating hot chili. It’s actually in the high 80s still. Sadface.

We dress up our chili with turkey meat, an onion, bell peppers, corn, and toppings and cook away until it’s spicy and thick.

Since you can make chili earlier and let it sit for a while, I had some extra time to make homemade cornbread. I used the recipe on the back of the Jif cornmeal bag and cut it in half. A regular amount makes a whole cornbread pie, or about 12 muffins, and half made about 16 cute mini-muffins, great for crumbling and taking for lunch during the week. I added corn kernels and only baked for about 8-10 minutes. Otherwise, it was as instructed. They are pretty cute.

This was a great weeknight meal, and really didn’t take that much time, or cleanup! I also made a veggie side dish, to come later this week!