apparently all caps is not acceptable title behavior.

Faithful readers!*  I have been remiss in my blogging, but I have a reason!

So, remember when I went to New York and it was autumn and lovely, and I mentioned how Arizona decided to tone it down a bit when I returned so that I could go outside and not get too stabby?

Yeah, that's over now.

Since I've gotten back to PHX, the temperature has decided to hover perilously close to 100º, which is exactly the same thing that happened this time last year, when I first arrived in Arizona.^  I had all these grand designs for fall cooking and baking, but the heat broke my resolve.  Fortunately, The Husband stepped up his game, and we decided that maybe, just maybe, if we pretended like it was fall and we made fall foods, perhaps we could trick the weather into changing.  

And one of the great fall foods, of course, is chili with cornbread (with smuggled apple pie, oh yes!).  I had asked The Husband to write about it, because he made it, but he responded, "Blearghª, it's just chili."  So, herewith I am going to try to re-create the chili-making.

First, choose 10 or so varieties of bean from our almost nonsensical collection.‡  Next, because you are clearly anticipating a long, hard winter that will require sustenance, through several handfuls of each bean type into the pressure cooker.  Put pressure cooker on the stove, then check email and Google reader.  Once beans cook, start chopping tomatoes (or use canned tomatoes, whatever), and dig out the frozen corn and peppers.  Chop some (a lot of) garlic too, and some onions, and throw everything into a pot and let it simmer.  Go read a few blog posts and comment on Facebook.  Put in spices.  Taste, then add more.  Yell at NPR story.  Add some more pepper, because everyone has tastebuds of steel, right?∆  Spend 20 minutes sifting through prodigious music collection to find perfect album for chili.  Serve.  Go get more milk, since your wife drank both your and her glasses before finishing even half her dinner.

So, yeah, it was spicy.  But!  It was tasty, especially when you add some sour cream and avocado and cheese, all of which cuts the mouth-burnination quotient greatly.  There was also green sweet cornbread (made with honey and blue cornmeal) and fig-cranberry-apple-ginger pie.  I don't know much about the construction of these two delights, other than that the pie contained Jonagold and Pippin apples (Pippins are kind of my new favorite apple, by the way); if you want the details, you'll have to ask The Husband.  Or just raise a ruckus, and perhaps he'll cave to peer pressure and finally write the damn post himself.

Next up, pasties!  (Not those kinds, pervert - this is a family blog.)

*All five of you!
^Happy One-Year-and-One-Day anniversary, PHX!  Except that it's not happy, because you're a punk and like trotting out heat waves like show ponies.
ªAt least, I think that's what he said.  It is very hard to transliterate guttural mumblings.
‡Please note that this makes up less than half of our total bean hoard.  Like I've said before, we (I) have problems.
∆Wrong.