Last year for Canadian Thanksgiving, Samantha and I drove from Vancouver to Salmon Arm, BC, to spend the weekend with her extended family there.   Within minutes of arriving, her uncle Michael was shopping around his plan to go on a hike.  At seven months pregnant, Samantha didn’t think she could comfortably climb the hill away from the Shuswap Lake.  Michael assured me that we’d ascend a few hundred feet and get great views of Mt. Ida:

It was a beautiful day, crisp and cool and sunny.  As we set out, it was just the two of us and a couple of dogs.

At 62-years-old, having only had me stay at his house once before that, Micheal didn’t really know me. We’d previously spent perhaps 20 hours together in the same place.  We chatted a bit, but largely followed the dogs.  I let Sooty off of his leash, and he ran back and forth from one spot of underbrush to another, sniffing so loudly that he sounded like a little steam engine:

So we were walking along, and I got a bit quiet, and he asked me how my previous few months had been. I said,

Well, you know, my father passed away a bit suddenly in August, and everything just seems… different… since then.

Michael was visibly moved.  He put his arm around my shoulders, and thought about what I’d said for a little while, and then said something that I recall perfectly:

I’m really sorry.  You know, time carries on, and you’ve been a man long enough to wonder what that means.  To be a man.  I think you’re finally finding out.  No man truly knows until he loses his own father.  And you’re going to be the dad now.

I nodded, and Michael then said,

We never really lose anyone, you know.

I know.  I’m reminded of that every day, since we named the baby Will.  Every time I say his name, I think of my father:

But I’ve not really thought about my own father in relation to Father’s Day.  Or – I’ve thought about him, but I didn’t realize I was doing so.  I’ve thought about this, my first Father’s Day as an actual father myself, as a milestone whereby I mark what it is I’m accomplishing for my child.  My own dad still has an impact in all of that, but it’s not easy to perceive.  He wasn’t one to celebrate individuals much.  I don’t remember a Father’s Day as ever being much more than a requirement to call him, send him a card and a gift, and maybe visit for the weekend if I could.  If I did visit, he would only have one goal – to go out to eat.  That is it.  A meal at some place where he could get oysters on the half shell and a bit of fresh ceviche.

I find myself 3000 miles from my beautiful wife and son on this, my first Father’s Day, thinking about what Wilton Travis Jordan would make of this place.  I’m in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but I don’t think he would have been as interested in it as I am.  I really want to stay here, and work here, and bring my little family here – for good.  I imagine he would have just told me to hurry up and meet those goals.

And he would have said that he’d like to see me some time.

For several months, I’ve been documenting good recipes in private Google Docs. I’m a big fan of Google Docs for this sort of purpose, and I’ve gotten to the point where everything that I want access to – from pretty much anywhere in the world – is up in the cloud. I would never use such a thing for information that deserves security, such as your list of URLs, usernames, passwords and instructions that you should make available to your next-of-kin in case of your untimely demise. You have done that, right? Consider just printing out things like that with good ink and putting them in a safe or bank deposit box.

Anyhow, we had a cool snap the other day and I got a craving for real homemade Texas red chili, and I noticed that we’ve not yet saved my recipe. The reason for that is pretty much that I don’t work from a recipe when I make chili. I really should, but the upside of not measuring or timing when it comes to chili, is that there is an element of surprise when things come out well.

A. This is a beef chili. It doesn’t have beans. If you want to make a bean soup, pick some beans you like and have at it. This is chili, so I start with several pounds of lean ground beef. In this example, I browned just over 4 pounds (2 kg) of 90% lean beef in a cast iron skillet, drained it and dumped it into a large slow-cooker.

B. Good chili is a tomato soup of sorts. I don’t think it makes much of a difference to use canned tomatoes vs. fresh tomatoes, but know that if you enter into the faith that fresh tomatoes are best, you’re going to be cutting up a lot of tomatoes. In this example, I used about twice (by weight) as much tomato as meat. That’s three large cans of diced tomatoes. Get the diced tomatoes. The whole ones make no sense (since you would have to cut them up), and tomato sauce just doesn’t work out the same. If you use enough canned, diced tomatoes, you’ll get enough tomato water to constitute all the broth you need.

C. Several tablespoons of chili powder (I used 6-10 and wasn’t really counting), a tablespoon of cumin, a heaping teaspoon of basil, several cloves of garlic, and a couple of squares of unsweetened bakers chocolate constituted the flavor-makers.

D. Believe it or not, it is possible to put too much onion in this chili. For this batch – which turned out really well if I do say so myself – I added one large red onion as you can see here:

E. Salt. I’ve always felt like the phrase “salt to taste” is a cop out, so here I’ll actually be specific. I added exactly one teaspoon of salt to the pot early on. A lot of chili that you might encounter at a chili cook-off in Texas actually has five times as much salt. It is certainly possible to leave the added salt right out, if you want to. I see my chili as one of the three things in my life that I actually add salt to, with the other two being potatoes and corn.

F. You’ve got to simmer this thing with a lid on for a long time. I don’t think it really blends until the crock pot has been working on it for at least four hours. Assuming that you’re not loosing much steam, you can cook this chili in a crock pot indefinitely, and every couple of hours it tastes a bit different. It is very important to stir the chili every 20-30 minutes while it’s cooking.

Options. I’ve had good results with all of the following: adding one can of beer to the mix at the start, leaving out the chocolate, adding a half-cup or so of brown sugar, adding one or two chopped fresh jalapeños to bring up the spice factor (red chili powder is pretty tame), using smoked cumin, using leaner or fattier beef, and topping the served chili with fresh diced onion and/or fresh shredded cheddar cheese.

Enjoy!

It was a world of fun:

Much love and thanks and hugs and fistjabbery to Tom Merritt and Jason Howell, two of the best guys in the business.

I feel like blogging.  A lot.
Stay tuned.