Chili Wars

The chili war has officially begun! I am laughing my head off right now, because it is 12:00 at night and we are having chili panic at our house.

When we went to our new ward we noticed a plaque in the hall next to the bishops office that was titled Cimarron Ward Chili Cook-off Winners. It has engraved plates with the winner of each year on it. We were excited that our ward was so into their chili cook-off, because Ryan and I both come from families that have ward award winning chili recipes. So when the sign up sheet went around in church to sign up to bring chili to the cook-off / halloween party I signed both of us up. So not only are we in competition with the ward, we are in competition with each other. I don't know what's worse.

Ryan started his chili tonight since the recipe calls for it to sit over night in the refrigerator which is what has triggered the chili panic. Earlier this week I told Ryan that we needed to get another big soup pot so that we could take both the chiles to the party. Then I decided that I wanted to get two cheap pots since ours are new and I have had whole crock-pots broken at church events. So when we went to Walmart the other night I saw some of those kettle looking pots (almost like the ones you do canning in) that are speckled, so I bought two. They are kind of tall and are 12 quarts, but I did not think anything of it.

Well, Ryan has made a single patch of his chili and has waited two hours for it to simmer and then transferred it into one of those pots and it only fills it about 3 inches. Now he is running to the store to buy more ingredients for his chili, because in his words "It looks so stupid". It really does look stupid though. It looks like he made enough chili for two people to eat it. I am having him get more of my ingredients too, so that I can double mine. A single batch of my recipe is a pretty good amount (way bigger than Ryan's single batch), the Lund's always make big serving of food for some reason.

I have a feeling it is going to be a very late night, since he is planning on making another batch and it has to simmer for two hours. Now I hope he wins so that my lack of sleep will have been for something. I already caught him trying to put my dried onion flakes into his chili, so I better keep at least one eye open tonight so that I do not get sabotaged.

Tomorrow I will be making my spider web cupcakes for the ward party too. So I will be posting about that on the Bird and the Berry. Cross your fingers that we make it through tonight and do well at the chili cook-off.