A Chili Cookoff

Once upon a time, my husband NEVER cooked.  Now I am not saying that he cooks now.   He doesn't.  But one day as a joke, as I was heading out the door to go to work on a Monday (when he was off on Mondays) I jokingly said, "Why dont you fix dinner tonight, ok, thanks." and left.  Much to my surprise when I got home that evening I walked into the kitchen and I distinctly remember thinking "What smells so good?" I was soooo confused.  He said that when I told him to make dinner that morning as I was heading out the door, he thought "Hmmm, I should surprise her and actually do it."  So he found my book that I have lots of recipes in and searched for something he thought he could do.  Turns out he chose his moms recipe for homemade chili.  That was what smelled so good.  And boy was it ever.  Seriously.  Its better than my chili.  Since that day several years ago he is now the chili maker in our home.  Some guys grill, Todd does chili. Thats all he cooks, but he does it well.   I love chili days.

Then there is Charlie.  Several years ago, he decided to make chili for Casey.  I will never forget, he called me one day and said "Mom, I made chili tonight and I think somethings wrong with it."  He proceeded to tell me exactly what he did which included how much garlic he used.  He said the recipe called for 2 or 3 (I cant remember now) cloves of garlic.  After questioning him about the garlic I realized he thought that a clove was one entire BULB of garlic. So YES he used at least 2 entire BULBS of garlic in that chili.  Thats gotta be at least 20 or 25 cloves of garlic.  Yes I would say something was wrong with that chili.  I laughed so hard.  They said their house smelled like garlic for like a month!  Oh.my.goodness.  So funny.  His chili has since greatly improved.  As a matter of fact he always says how his is so good.  He thought he could win a cookoff against us.  We begged to differ.  A little family feud going on.  We have talked many times about doing a chili cookoff between the two.

This weekend after looking at the beautiful beautiful balloons, we had our CHILI COOKOFF!

We divided the stove up.  Todd had half and Charlie the other.

Casey and I were the Sous chefs!  We did the chopping for the guys just so we could help out.  They did the cooking though.

Avery decided to be the resident photographer.

They got it simmering and the house smelled good!

This is Avery explaining the voting process we were about to have after everyone tasted the chilis.

The living room was full of eager tasters and voters.  All of whom apparently thought it necessary to throw their shoes into the middle of the living room.

This is Adam enjoying MORE.

 This is Todd tasting Charlies, I think.

I thought it was pretty funny that when Matt tasted Todd's bowl he said "OK that one surprised me!"  LOL  He didnt expect it to be good!  hehehe

After everyone had tried both chilis, Avery gave them all a sticky note on which to vote.

And the winner of the Chili Cookoff and a Red Hot Chili Pepper is...

TODD!!!!!!  Also known as Poppa!

From the look of the pots at the end of things, I think its safe to say they liked both of them.

That was really fun and not to mention YUMMY!  I stick to my original thought that Todds was the best but Charlies was pretty dang good too.