Chili and beans

Eastside Road, February 3, 2011—

I' M NOT GOING TO look it up; someone else can do that; there's a limit to my intellectual curiosity after binge-eating as I just did. Thing is, we had friends over to eat chile and beans; I made a batch of guacamole to warm up with, then a couple of bowls of that delicious chili; green salad of course (I should make a keyboard shortcut for that phrase), and Lindsey's old-favorite bananas-cinnamon-sugar-and-whipped-cream for dessert. So I'm pretty well slowed down at the moment.

But I do wonder: why was the phrase always "chili and beans" in my childhood? Does the dish chili not automatically include beans? Can there be a standalone chili innocent of beans? If so, what sort of carbohydrate is involved?

In her mania to continue emptying our stores L. found some corn meal in a corner of the icebox, just enough to make some cornbread to have with tonight's chili. Now that's inspired, that combination; Chili and beans is already one of the Hundred Plates, and the cornbread is frosting, to mix up a bad metaphor, on the cake.

Monasterell, Albero, Jumilla (Spain), 2009; Malbec, Doña Paula "Los Cardos, Mendoza (Argentina), 2009

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OH: AND BREAKFAST today at Alice's, truffled scrambled eggs and a little green salad, and with it a surprise. You think you've run into about every possible wonderful combination, and then something new comes along. This was simplicity itself: toasted bread, drizzled with good olive oil, then spread with — Seville-orange marmalade! It sounded improbable when first mooted, but oh boy is this a delicious combination.