The favorite chili recipe from our family cookbook, made with simple but beautifully balanced ingredients. The technique is simple too, just brown the ground beef and spicy pork sausage, dump everything else in, then cook slowly. A cousin calls my sister's sausage chili recipe “magnificent"! I agree – it's now my own go-to recipe for hearty, man-friendly chili.
COMPLIMENTS!
“...what a great chili recipe. It's got just the right amount of spice, the right amount of meat." ~ Anonymous
In 2003, my family on my mother’s side published a family cookbook, collecting 350 recipes from more than a dozen families and three countries. What a collection of tried-and-true family recipes!At family gatherings, we stand in the kitchen – fussing over the food, of course – and compare notes from the cookbook. "Did you try Laura’s Carrot Soup?" "What about That Pink Salad?"Still, some times a great recipe is overlooked until someone saves the day, as happened when…

The classic French beef stew, beef marinated and then slowly braised in wine. Worthy of a special occasion. Just making it may create an occasion! Beef Bourguignon is a luxurious beef stew. (Stew?!) So says me, paraphrasing Julia Child who stripped pâté of all pretension by deconstructing it to ‘luxurious cold meatloaf’. (Meatloaf?!) Made with meat, wine and vegetables, Beef Bourguignon is nothing more than beef stew -- and at the same time, much more.My two favorite beef stew recipes – Beef and Mushroom Stew and Winter Stew – find their way to the table in a couple of hours.At the other end of the time spectrum is Beef Bourguignon, made over three days. It uses all the same ingredients but feels like quite a production, in fact IS quite a production, the stuff of which lore is made. So yes, Beef Bourguignon is beef stew but making it, well, it’s deserving of an occasion.An occasion is just what happened this month when life converged: friends mentioned wanting to try elk meat, an eas…

What does it take to create nearly the same mouthfeel and flavor of traditional mashed potatoes, except low-calorie and low-carb? Ditching the potatoes! For anyone looking for a low-cal and low-carb substitute for potatoes, try mashing cooked cauliflower and turnips with the usual butter and milk plus a splash of Tabasco which – do not ask me how or why, it stumps me – makes all the difference in the taste. Turns out, there are two ways to concoct a steaming bowl of light ‘n’ fluffy mashed potatoes. The first calls for a dairy’s worth of butter and cream. The second calls for – get this! – ditching the spuds entirely! These ‘potatoes’ are really cauliflower and turnips, cooked and mashed. Texture-wise, the mouthfeel is like traditional mashed potatoes except lighter. Taste-wise, once the ‘feel’ of mashed potatoes is present, the two vegetables are subtle enough that you just might not notice! Now before Mr. Potato Head accuses me of potato-ism, please know that I love potatoes! In fac…