Frozen Solid

I woke up early yesterday morning and got on Amazon to place my Christmas order. I found everything I wanted and put it in my shopping cart, but decided to wait until afternoon to push the button because I wanted to ask one of my daughters-in-law what her youngest would like for Christmas. I thought I might be able to include it in the order.

By jove, I got her suggestion yesterday afternoon, went back to my computer, and my Amazon world had changed. Some things were no longer available; the price on one thing had gone up significantly; the delivery date for another was not until after Christmas. Holy Moley! Only four hours later. Cyber Monday v. Nana, and Cyber Monday won.

Still, I was able to figure most everything out, and now a big chunk of my Christmas shopping is done. The rest should be easy. As an interesting side note, according to Jeff Bezos (the Amazon czar), in a relatively short period of time (sometime after 2015), my order will possibly be delivered by a tiny little drone that will land in my front yard. Seriously, it gets creepier and creepier.

The four hours I spent not pushing the “place order” button on Amazon.com were not spent unwisely, however. I took two of my granddaughters to see the movie Frozen. It was a 1:15 showing, and after plopping down $23 for tickets and another $12 for popcorn, watermelon-flavored Sour Patch Kids and fruit-flavored Mike & Ikes, I hurried them into the theater, hoping we could still get a seat as the movie was scheduled to begin in a couple of minutes. Much to my surprise, the theater was entirely empty. Apparently, if people weren’t at work, they were either shopping at the malls or sitting at home buying all of my Amazon items. The movie, Friends, was phenomenal. Seriously, I enjoyed it very much. The animation was amazing and the music was awesome. Typical Disney princess story line, only in a frozen tundra. But some of the characters offered dialogue that made me laugh out loud.

I am so happy that they make children’s movies now that are also enjoyable to the adult person taking them to the movie. Back when my son was small, the movies I had to sit through were terrible. I will accept the PG rating for the new kids’ movies as long as I can enjoy them as well. They don’t understand the PG stuff anyway.

I highly recommend the movie.

Tonight, in keeping with my healthy eating post-Thanksgiving, I made a version of my mother’s chili recipe, adding delicious vegetables and a couple of kinds of beans to add fiber. When all is said and done, it really isn’t much like my mother’s chili, but I’m going to give you her recipe, exactly as it is on the recipe card, because it makes me laugh every time I see it.

Beckie's Chili (originally my chili)

Ingredients
1 lb. ground beef
1 lg. onion, chopped
1 t. salt
2-3 T. chili powder
1 T vinegar
1-1/2 T. brown sugar
1 c. water
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 can kidney beans
Garlic salt

Process
Brown ground beef and onion. Add rest of ingredients.

Nana’s Notes: It always makes me laugh that she calls it Beckie’s chili, but adds that it was originally her chili. Is my sister Beckie a chili recipe thief? Or is it just that Mom always loved her best so she will attribute her recipe to Beckie? I will never know.

My version uses very lean ground beef (sometimes I use half ground beef and half ground turkey). I sauté a clove of garlic with the onion and beef and leave out the garlic salt. In addition to the chili powder, I also add a tsp. of ground cumin. I leave out the vinegar and the brown sugar. Instead of tomato sauce, I used a can of tomato paste and a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes. I also added a green pepper for flavor and vitamins. Finally, in addition to kidney beans, I also added a can of black beans. I know I was going to go low-carb this week, but beans are good carbs with lots of fiber. I won't apologize.

If I were smart, I would have waited until Thursday to serve chili as the high is only expected to reach 8. Yikes!