Spicy Chili, Spicy Night

An Italian, a cat and a chef walk into a bar. The bartender said, “What’ll it be?” The Italian said, “Red Wine, from my home country.” The cat said, “2% Milk, on the rocks.” The chef said, “Everything you’ve got. I have a party tonight and the more they drink, the better my food tastes.”

Buh-duh-schhhh….

Ok, so that was lame. Ok, so I made it up. And yes, I know telling jokes is not my forte. But now you’ve seen a glimpse of the real, lame-oid Rebekah. Tah-dah.

This is what happens to your humor if you get up at 5am to start cooking chili. It gets weird, then it gets strange, then it gets bad.

I ended up on bad.

I had a few people (hah!) over to the house this weekend and thought it would be fun to serve up a ton of chili, cornbread muffins and call it a day. I started off with a simple recipe that grew into a complicated mathematical equation in order to serve 60.

Ground Beef-check. 10 Pounds-check. Drain the fat-check.

Open up 26 cans of beans-check.

Consider buying an electric can opener-check.

Chop up 15 yellow onions-check.

Scavenge garden for peppers, chop up, seal in ziplock bags and don’t rub eyes-wish I could say “check” here.

Cook for at least an hour utilizing the capacity of your canners because none of your real pots are big enough. Don’t allow chili to burn on the bottom-again, wish I could say “check”.

Have a nervous breakdown, pour the contents of the chili out of the canners into at least 7 other smaller pots, scrape the burnt beans off of the bottom, scrub pot for at least 30 minutes, taste chili, confirm it doesn’t taste burnt, transfer back into the canners and turn down heat-check.

Make 60 cornbread muffins-check.

Cut up 2 lbs of carrots and 3 celery bunches-check.

Clean house-check.

Have a glass of wine-double check.

Wait for guests to arrive. Enjoy the night-check.

Eat the leftover chili for the next week-check.

I’m having a Party here tonight!

I’m having a party here tonight.

Ok. Maybe it won’t look like this tonight. But it’s a good reminder of how far this old house has come.

After buying this house, we had to gut the past bad remodeling jobs to make it livable. This scene here is now this…

I think it’s a bit of a step-up.

But, this did have that “open” feeling as well. When I’m tempted to be frustrated that the house still isn’t finished, it’s good to look back and see just how far it’s come.

And, it’s also good to remind myself of the above scenario when I begin to look for another potential property that we could buy and fix up “a little”.  Well played, old photos. Well played.

To see more pictures of this remodel, go here.
To see more finished pictures of the home, go here or here. 

Ever get nervous about entertaining “the Unknowns”?

Dear Readers:
I thoroughly enjoy welcoming people into my home. If you are ever in the Oklahoma area, look me up. I will put a pot of coffee on, grab some chocolate zucchini muffins out of the freezer and set my Pandora to Ella Fitzgerald.

The house may not be perfectly clean, I may not have the fanciest furniture and my cats may leave a few white hairs on your clothing. But, if you are up for those few inconveniences, I am up to stuffing you full of food and then sending you merrily on your way.

However, I know my shortcomings. I am a work in progress and there are those rare occasions when I wonder if my “hostessing is the most-essing”. It’s silly, I know. But when guests are “the Unknowns” to me and also co-workers of Biceps, my crazy meter skyrockets.

“Men are simple”, I tell myself. “Throw some meat on a paper plate, place a beer in the other hand, and they will think you rule as a hostess.”

Although, I don’t think men use the term hostess.

I tell myself the above theory over and over, and yet I’ll spend 10 hours cleaning, 5 hours cooking, 3 hours grocery shopping and at least 2 hours getting ready…

And then they’ll eat everything in 10 minutes and not care if the toilet is clean, as long as there is one-or at least a tree they can stand behind.

So, dear readers-does anyone else get nervous about entertaining “the Unknowns” or is it just my weird paranoia of not measuring up to what I think people think of me?

(Which is ridiculous and not at all a Godly thing to do, but yet, here I am doing it…I am definitely a work in progress.)