Brevity by Dan Thompson for December 06, 2014

3 days of eating that stuff and his reception in the office will be chilly, too.

I make my chili with cubed potatoes instead of beans. It still has good flavor but NO GAS.

A chili cook-off always leads to a huge conflagration with pranksters.

From the nicely warped brain of Shel Silverstein, noticing that “Beans Taste Fine:”

Now a friend of mine, way back in ChicagoYou know, he finally made his pile.Well he got himself a mansion on Butler and SheffAn’ hHe was livin’ in the latest style;But I run into him, he was eatin’ in a greasy spoonWhile parkled in front was his big limousine.I said, “Buddy, you’ve got so much moneyHow come youre in here, eatin beans?”An’ he said

After you’ve been havin’ steak for a long timeBeans, beans taste fine.An’ after you’ve been drinkin’ champagne and brandyYou gonna settle for wine.He said “The world is funny, and people are strangeAnd man is a creature of constant change, andAfter you’ve been havin’ steak for a long timeBeans, beans taste fine.”

miscreant1: Beans should never be in chili. A side dish of pintos, frejoles refritos, or frejoles ranchero, are all fine. Potatoes just add starch where none is needed and quickly gets mushy.

Thanks, Alexikakos! I can’t seem to post links successfully on here which is why I resorted to just the lyrics (and just the first verse, for that matter.) I’d never actually heard Silverstein sing it himself: I’ve got in on a few old folk albums by the Chad Mitchell Trio and people like that. (Not that there were many people like that……..) A few years back I read a bio of him, “A Boy Named Shel”, which was one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. (I just finished one about Ogden Nash which is also excellent……coincidence?)

I didn’t get the joke until I noticed the g-f switch.

Only Texans say you can’t put beans in chili! If ever there’s another Civil War, it will be between the states that make chili without beans and those that make it with beans!http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Chili/ChiliHistory.htm This link gives some of the many myths about the history of chili, i.e. no one knows except it’s not a Mexican dish. However, the link is definitely the Texan view of chili.

That joke stinks.

SunflowerGirl100: Chili con carne: San Antonio, 1870s; beef enchaladas, Albuquerque, 1880s; tamales, Wichita to Aztec, pre-history.

Not long ago, my daughter-in-law’s S.I.L., a very recent German immigrant, had just moved here to the U.S. She didn’t know squat about chili; even had trouble pronouncing it.

She went to the library to quickly inform herself about chili and it’s ingredients, then on to the store to purchase said ingredients.

Then our fresh German immigrant, made a batch of her chili and entered it in our local Chili contest. She won 1st place easily, kicking the butts of contestants that had been making and refining fantastic chili for many decades.

So ya know, ya just never know [;-)

hippogriff, follow the link. You’re quoting the official version. Legends go back to 17th century and here’s a quote about the 1850s 1850 – Records were found by Everrette DeGolyer (1886-1956), a Dallas millionaire and a lover of chili, indicating that the first chili mix was concocted around 1850 by Texan adventurers and cowboys as a staple for hard times when traveling to and in the California gold fields and around Texas. Needing hot grub, the trail cooks came up with a sort of stew. They pounded dried beef, fat, pepper, salt, and the chile peppers together into stackable rectangles which could be easily rehydrated with boiling water. This amounted to “brick chili” or “chili bricks” that could be boiled in pots along the trail. DeGolyer said that chili should be called “chili a la Americano” because the term chili is generic in Mexico and simply means a hot pepper. He believed that chili con carne began as the “pemmican of the Southwest.”