So, somehow its gotten extremely close to Christmas. Not sure how it happened, usually I have all of my shopping done by now, but to be honest I bought some gifts just after last Christmas (I love the after holiday deals.) I finally put my tree up today because I kept getting in trouble by my 3 year old niece, although there's not many ornaments on it just yet, still have to dig those out.

So usually I like to have done at least some baking by now, but I'm a little behind on all the stuff I want to do, my kitchen is still half a mess from reno's, so its hard to get some things done when I want when I have to move 5 different boxes to get to my mixer. Eventually I'll get to it, mainly because it's part of my brother's Christmas gift, I'll fill his Death Star cookie jar with Star Wars cookies! Yes, I am a total geek, and I am awesome in my geek knowledge. But back to baking/cooking.

I know I said I would try to get some recipes on as well, so I thought I would share one of my favourite cold weather meals. Chili! It's always the right amount of warmth I need on the cold damp nights. So here's my favourite recipe, which is from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que! It's a pretty big batch, but you can scale down easily enough to enjoy, or do what I do, make the large batch and freeze the leftovers for the nights you don't feel like cooking.

Texas Red Chili

3 1/2 to 4 lbs beef sirloin or stew meat
Kosher salt
Fresh ground black pepper
1 T oil
1/4 pound bacon, diced
3 C chopped onion
2 C chopped green pepper
2 medium jalapeno peppers, seeded & minced
2 T chopped garlic
4 C beef broth
1 Can (28oz) crushed tomatoes
2 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
1 T chili powder
2 t cumin
1 1/2 T brown sugar
1 T oregano
Juice of 1/2 lime
Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

1. Trim away any fat or membrane from your meat, and dice it into 1 inch cubes, season the meat well with salt & pepper and set aside.
2. So turn your pot on medium high heat and start to heat up your oil, toss your diced bacon in and heat until brown & crispy. Scoop out the bacon and set it to drain on paper towel (it won't hurt the recipe if you choose to leave the bacon out or start eating it while still cooking.) The recipe does say to leave the bacon out but I always choose to put mine back in once it's ready to simmer, I just like the extra flavour.
3. Toss in the onions, peppers, and jalapenos, season with some salt and pepper and cook until soft. Add in your garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Then add in the meat, this will get a nice sear on your beef for the chili. 
4. You can start to add in the broth, tomatoes, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, chili powder, cumin & brown sugar. Give it all a good stir. Now it's time to cover your pot and bring it to a boil; then crack the lid, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer for a couple hours. The thing with chili is the longer it sits, the better it tastes!
5. Once the chili has simmered and is at a thickness you like you can add the oregano, lime juice, and cilantro. Fish out the cinnamon stick and bay leaves, add salt and pepper if you feel like it needs a little bit more, like I said, everything is to your taste.
6. Ladle the chili out into bowls, top with some shredded cheddar cheese, and enjoy!

If you don't want to take the time or feel that comfortable with your knives just yet, you can definitely use ground beef. Personally I don't like things too spicy, so I don't use much jalapeno or chili powder but everything is relative to how YOU like it, so play with the recipes, taste it often, so you can begin to adjust it to your comfort level.

So it's a funny thing when you decide to quit cooking professionally, I cook more at home now that I'm not doing it all day long. It used to be that I would get home from a long shift at work and I wouldn't even want to look at my kitchen, let alone eat or cook anything in it. So now that I'm actually doing more cooking at home, I find I actually have to do more grocery shopping then usual, sometimes making double or triple batches of things so I can freeze some so on those days were I don't have a lot of time or too tired to cook, I can just pull things like my pulled pork, chili, or stew right out.

So with doing more cooking at home, I've been going through my recipes and cookbooks to find different things to cook. One thing that's really great to find different kinds of foods to try is pintrest. Pintrest is an evil thing, I spend a lot of time on it, either looking at the different recipes people have put online, or spending an infinite amount of time on the Geek threads, gotta say, love the amount of geekery on pintrest. My cousin had never heard of it, so one weekend while I was up visiting, I showed her a few things on pintrest, including how many Harry Potter things are on there. Next thing you know I'm getting a text from her saying she's skipping studying that night to go on pintrest, for hours. Got in a bit of trouble for that one.

Another thing that's great for recipes and such, are murder mystery books. Believe it or not there are a tonne of murder mysteries with recipes. A few of my favorites are Joanne Fluke, Jessica Beck, Jessica Conant-Park, and Avery Aames. They each have a great series of books with the main characters always getting involved with murders one way or another, the recipes are pretty fun, there's donuts, cookies, cakes, mains, etc. I would definitely suggest trying out one of these authors if you like humorous mysteries.

So the posts from now on I'm going to try to post recipes that I'm trying out or things that I just really like and want to share.

The beginning of this journey started almost a year & a half ago, I've been cooking for over 12 years, and loved what I did. I mean, how many people got to play all day and get paid for it, I loved cooking for years, ever since I was a child, I love baking, and just playing with my food.

A year & a half ago I started to lose that love that I had for so long, work became, well, work. And for me, that wasn't how it was supposed to be, ever. So I started changing jobs, seeing if it was the places that I was working, and not the work itself. Through the job changes I met some really great people who were fun to work with, but it didn't really make it better for me
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 So after my last job change, I had just finished the probation period when I went to see my Chef, I wanted to explain to him why I was giving my notice to leave this job that had great people to work with and that treated their staff really well. I hadn't even been there a month when we lost my step-sister to cancer, I had called my boss to see if he would cover my shift the next day just so I could deal (I was shopping in Watertown with my sister-in-law when I got the text from my brother.) My Chef had no problem covering my shift, and I knew I had to work the day after, so I get to work only to find out that they not only covered my shift that day, but for the entire week and told me not to worry about anything, that I could come back when I was ready.

It was things like this that made it hard to explain why I was leaving, that it wasn't because of the place or the people, but simply because I lost my passion for cooking. Well, I was certainly surprised when he said he understood, that it happens, and that maybe making a clean break from cooking would allow me to eventually come back to it. It usually happens, you stop doing something and eventually miss it and slowly start to get back in, baby steps really, so this blog will follow journey from leaving to hopefully loving once again.