Chili Night

Normally I wouldn't dedicate a post to what my daughter had for dinner. But she was cracking me up last night and I had to share.

I cooked up the hamburger meat, sauteed the onions and garlic and threw it all together with some beef broth and spices and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight. Yesterday morning, I put that, along with some black beans, kidney beans, tomatoes and some pureed pumpkin into the crockpot. I left out some of the hotter ingredients, like the chile peppers I would normally use. I also left out the green peppers, since I knew she doesn't like them. I let it sit on low for 9 hours until dinner time.

I wasn't sure how the Munchkin was going to react to chili, if she would like it or even try to eat it. She loves spaghetti and has eaten most of the ingredients in the chili in some form or another with out any trouble. I have always seasoned up her food with lots of stuff to get her used to intense flavors, I even put herbs and seasonings in her scrambled eggs. But I thought with the chili powder and cumin and everything else all put together, with that spicy extra kick that comes with chili, might have been a little too much.

Boy was I wrong.

I did mix in a hefty dollop of sour cream to cool it off a bit, along with some shredded cheese. I gave her her bowl and she immediately went to town. After the cheese melted down it became all stringy, so of course she had to play with that for a while. When she would pull her spoon up out of the bowl, she had to break apart the string of cheese, pile it up on top of her spoon and make sure there wasn't any hanging down before she would put it in her mouth. These made her left hand very cheesy indeed.


Once all of the cheese strings had been cleared and removed, she shoveled that chili in like nobody's business.


She finished her first bowl pretty quickly, then started eating the stuff she had spilled all over her tray. I asked her if she wanted more and she shouted "More!", with a huge chili faced grin. So I filled up her bowl again. Halfway through, she wanted to start feeding me some.


So I opened my mouth and took a bite. She would shake her arms around, wiggle like crazy in her chair, all excited with her face all scrunched up and shout "yummy"! She seriously LOVES feeding other people. I was already pretty full from my own bowl, so after a few bites of hers, I had to say "all done" and even gave her the sign for it. She was a little disappointed, but moved back to feeding herself.

When she started having trouble scraping the bottom of the bowl with her spoon, she resorted to using her fingers to pick out the remaining beans and tomatoes.



I seriously can not believe how much she loved this chili. She never eats two full bowls of anything and she might have even eaten more if I had given it to her.


And its a good thing I didn't. After dinner we headed out to run a few errands. I opened up the back door after pulling up to our first stop, and found her sitting in her seat, with a sour look on her face and about 2 Tb of puked up chili running down the front of her shirt. It might have been my dad's fault for spinning her around and tossing her on the couch right after she ate and right before we left, but maybe we'll stop after one bowl next time, just to be safe.

After I got her cleaned up, we headed in. I walked around the store, kinda embarrassed, thinking everyone could smell puke on us as we walked by them. I would sometimes catch a whiff of her myself and my gag reflex would start to kick in. Oh well, what are ya gonna do?

She was totally fine the rest of the night. Not even any crazy poops or anything.