Day 8: Egg and Cheese Sandwich on Wheat, Carmelized Onions, Chili and Cornbread

I'm a day late posting this, but I did actually take pictures of everything.

I made myself another egg sandwich for lunch yesterday, but it wasn't until I had already started making the egg when I realized that my boyfriend had eaten the last bagel in the house. Whoops. So I used the only thing we had: Walmart Brand Wheat Bread. The bread itself is pretty bland, and it was sort of stale to begin with, so the sandwich as a whole wasn't that great.

For dinner, my boyfriend and I decided on chili. Chili is an interesting dish, because I think everybody has their own way of making chili. I particularly remember offering to make chili for a group of friends in Boston, and at least two of them replied hesitantly with, "Well...I have my own way of making chili and I'm very picky about it." One of them was from Texas, and I've heard they tend not to use beans. I tend to make a more savory chili, though I've tried plenty of sweeter chilis.

My chili yesterday was pretty simple - I used the ingredients below, plus spices. One thing that differs from a lot of other people's recipes is that I usually use stew meat, as opposed to ground beef.

I start by cutting the stew meat into even smaller chunks and cooking it.

At the same time, cook the onions in butter until they start appearing translucent. (I use a whole onion and cut it into large strips, but you can use less onion if you prefer.)

Add the green pepper, cook that for a few minutes, then add the cooked meat.

Then add the diced tomatoes, beans, beer, and spices. To season the chili, I used chili powder, cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, red pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt and pepper.

Normally, I would use a beer with a stronger flavor, but some friends left some Bud Light here a few months ago, and this is probably the only way either of us are going to use the Bud Light.

Anyways, let the chili simmer for a few hours at a low temperature, and serve with some cheese and a side of cornbread.

This is my go-to cornbread recipe. I find it to be not as dry as most cornbread recipes, though yesterday's batch was a bit drier than normal. I also cut into it almost as soon as it came out of the oven, because I was hungry.

Also, yesterday afternoon's snack was caramelized onions, made from half an onion I had leftover from another time. These were made with butter, white wine, and brown sugar.