No fishing, but good eating for sure!

Several of the fishing blogs I follow post food pic's.  Some times it's during fishing, like the posts of Chasing Blue Lines http://chasingbluelines.blogspot.com/... Others it's a combination of delicious comfort foods and fishing feasts like Alan over at http://smallstreamreflections.blogspot.com/ or Mark at http://fishingsmallstreams.blogspot.com/.  All of those folks seem to have tasty eat's down to an art form...

So, while I was preparing for the deep freeze we are scheduled to receive over the next 4~ days, it seemed fitting that I should make a big vat of venison chili... and copy those great bloggers above by showing off my tasty version of this timeless dish!

My chili is based on two things: 1.) years of making chili to a specific recipe as a teen and through college at the Petersham Country Store, and 2.) like my fly tying, I'm not really good at following recipe's so this has steadily evolved over the years and probably will continue too...

That said, my wife the foodie who does not like chili traditionally really enjoy's this version, so it's got to be good eh :)! Ha!

The items used are:

• 2lb of ground venison (straight, not cut with pork fat or beef fat)
• 1 jalepeno
• 1 chili pepper (the real deal)
• 1 sweet onion
• 1-2 orange or red sweet peppers
• .25 cups organic molasses
• 1 can organic tomato paste
• 3-4 diced tomato's
• 1-2 can's diced tomato's
• 2-3 carrots diced
• 1 large can chick peas
• 1 large can black beans
• salt and pepper to taste
• about a tsp of chili powder
• about 1-2 tbsp ceylon cinnamon

You can play with the amounts of each based on volume... That said, Ive found this ingredient list works well for a low meat (my favorite) option that only has 1lb of venison... While my wife loves the high meat version (2lb venison).  Just noting that for reference.

Here's a few pic's:

Just getting started a little butter in the pan, and simmering onion and peppers (don't have all of them in yet in this pic) until soft.

Just added the meat - it's starting to cook, hence the very light pink color - venison is a lot darker when raw.  I was lazy and dropped it in frozen today, so it extended the process compared to using thawed meat... It's a lot easier with raw v frozen :)

Ready for action... Almost.  It needs about 4-5 hours of simmering, but even with that, it will taste better tomorrow and the next day than it does today... 

Hopefully where ever you are, the snow drops are starting to bloom, or it's just plain hitting spring now.  But for any of you in the deep freeze like me... This will definitely leave you warm for a while :)

Have a super week
Will