Ree Drummond's Chili

My grandfather was born on a windy, desolate NE Montana homestead on October 16, 1913 near the town of Plentywood.  He didn't weigh much over 4 lbs and my great-grandmother placed him in a shoebox on the warming oven.  He was one of 8 children and outlived all but one sister.  Five of them died during a 1-year period last year.  They're a tenacious, stubborn lot.  During his lifetime he did everything from building roads for the CCC to farming to wheat inspection to furniture sales to owning a service station to managing rentals.  He tamed and drove horses, animals he deeply respected and appreciated, the work a joy he talked about throughout his life.  At the hardware store in town he bought his mother a gas-powered washing machine with his first CCC paycheck.  He married a girl from Wildrose, North Dakota who hailed from a quiet line of Swedish immigrants.  Their life together brought 6 children into the world including my dad.  They made numerous cross-country moves between the Montana and North Dakota prairies and his brother's Skagit County strawberry farms, where high water floods were the norm and he nearly died from asthma.  In the 1950s they settled in Walla Walla and never left.  Five years after Grandma died he remarried and embarked on a much more relaxed 34-year marriage.  He loved to garden and attributed his long life to garlic.  The day my I took my soon-to-be-husband out to meet them, my grandmother met us at the door and said, "Let me run get George, he's out back digging an irrigation ditch."  He was 89 years old.  He died on his 101st birthday.


At his funeral, my Dad shared stories about Grandpa.  It was the best part of the funeral....stories about a man, told by his son.  The son who had watched the old man's life longer than any other person in the room.  Who knew what made the man tick and honored his wishes even when inconvenient.  Who along with his own wife visited him at least twice daily in his last several years and cared for him literally around the clock in the last weeks of his life.  The stories Dad shared shone through the lens of 5 themes he believed made up the ethic Grandpa lived by:  focus, hard work, tenacity, excellence, kindness.  I have never thought my Dad was much like my grandfather because they're vastly different in some very specific ways and while I loved my grandfather I wasn't especially close to him.  My Dad was much warmer, available, fun.  But I can definitely see now, and appreciate, how the natural inclinations of my Dad's heart and mind were nurtured by the personality and ways of his own dad.  I see those traits flow in my Dad, even glimmers in my own boy's young life.  Where I see inklings of those qualities in me, I will rejoice evermore deeply for the sense of connection and line that I am part of.  We never fall far from the tree.  Even when we don't know it.


I'm quite certain Grandpa never ate this chili -- I don't think I ever saw him eat a kidney bean in any form, but to get this recipe he or my grandmother would've had to have accessed the internet, and while she's ok with email, I'm pretty sure he never touched a keyboard in his whole life.  But my sister and I made it for the family gathering held at her house the night after his funeral.  We did it as part of a baked potato bar but it's great with cornbread or tortilla chips.  It is hands down the best chili I have ever had or made.  You can make it a day or two ahead, it'll keep fine in the fridge.  We re-heated it in a crockpot.  I admit that in the flurry of activity that morning I grabbed the paprika instead of the chili powder but with some serious tweaking later it worked out just fine.  You won't do that because you'll be paying at least a modicum of attention and that's about all you need.  The most labor-intensive part of the whole recipe is chopping garlic.  The rest of it's pretty much dump and pour.  I recommend adding canned crushed tomatoes.


Here's the link to the recipe.  Cheers to grandfathers!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/simple-perfect-chili-recipe.html