— Anna Marie Trotman

We do not have it on, um, Rouxbe. And in fact, my chili recipe changes kind of every time I make it, depending on what I have on hand and kinda what the season is a little bit. Um, it's always gonna start with a meise, so I'm going to have like a carrot, uh, and a yellow onion. I'll sometimes put celery into it. My wife's kind of an aversion to celery, so if it goes in early enough, it's okay. It doesn't permeate the whole dish. So a lot of times I don't put it into it. Um, I'll start with that and just, uh, I'll start with a little bit of oil or water, um, and then, uh, add in the, the, some of the chili powder there and a little bit of cumin, um, to start out with that as well. And then, um, I'll start kind of building on from there. So I'll put in my beans and I'll put in my, um, you know, I'll put in chilies. Uh, usually I put my chilies in before my beans and then I'll put in, um, tomatoes as well. And I'll do, uh, you know, fresh tomatoes and I'll do, uh, canned tomatoes, usually just a diced tomato organic works great. Just make sure you have A-B-P-I-B-P-A line, uh, free line can. Um, and then just dump the whole mixture of diced tomatoes into it. Uh, I'll usually do a mixture of, uh, black beans and pinto beans, but sometimes I'll do like a white bean chili. Um, and then sometimes I'll even put TVP in, like I was saying before, the textured vegetable protein. Um, and that kind of, you know, depends on the mood at the moment. Um, I'm always gonna use a fresh stock to be able to get it up and going. And the whole thing is I'm always going to be adding spices for every layer of something I put in. So if I cook all my miis off, I'm going to incorporate spices then, and then I add my next ingredient, like the chilies, and I'll add in more spice then. And then, um, I will add in the beans and tomatoes. I'll re flavor it again and you'll see the depth of flavor starts to build and build basically as you're going. My biggest secret is I always make the chili the night before, right? So don't eat the chili the night you make it. Let it sit and kind of marinate into itself, or at least today. Um, so that's probably, you know, my kind of go-to chili. And uh, of course it'll top it off with things like cilantro or my kids have been liking tortilla chips over the top of it lately, or just eating it with a tortilla chip, which hey, as long as you're eating it, that's great. Um, you know, it can do like a, uh, like a vegan, um, sour cream on the top of it too. We can do that just like a silk and tofu and lemon if you'd like to, um, you know, just to be able to kind of add another depth of flavor to it as well.