Minimum Effort Chili

I have been really busy lately, and I wanted to make something that met the following requirements: 1) it had to be fairly easy, 2) it had to be made with stuff I ALREADY had at the house, and 3) it had to be something that would be good reheated as we were going out to dinner last night. So I came up with this chili. It takes about 10 minutes to throw it all together, but about 8 hours to cook.

First things first. Place the contents of a 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes in a bowl and crush tomatoes with your fingers, removing any stems or skins that you find.

Add a cup and a half of rinsed and picked through dried black beans.

Chop one onion, 5 cloves of garlic, a hot pepper (from some I had frozen earlier in the summer), and a habenero (from the garden).

Cube a pork tederloin. This guy was about a pound and a half.

Place all of the above in a crock pot. Add 3 cups of beef broth, a 1/3 of a cup of chili power (I use Penzey's Hot), and a liberal amout of salt and pepper.

Add a can of beer. Stag here of course. (You know, Stag gets a lot of shout outs here. Stag should give me a free t-shirt or a little something for the effort.) Add a can of tomato paste as well.

Stir, cover and heat on the high setting for about 5 hours. Turn to low before you leave to meet your parents and sister for dinner out in Chesterfield. Worry about the cats knocking it off the counter and burning themselves, or chewing through the cord and electricuting themselves and the house burning down. Think "maybe this is why I never use the crockpot." Enjoy meeting up with the family. Realize at some point that because you said "hey lets all get together, we will come out there!" that everyone thinks there will be a big announcement. Make announcement at table along the lines of "uh, we just came out because we haven't been around town on the weekends, we are not making any announcement here or anything." Finish dinner. Get leftovers packed for lunch tomorrow and accidentally leave them on the table at the restaurant. Head home. (With the exception of the first step here, the rest are optional.)

The house smells like chili now.

Looks good. Taste and adjust seasoning. I added more chili powder and salt and pepper. The Captain grabbed a bottle of El Yucateco and dumped a bunch in while I was busying myself with other endeavors.

Garnish with onions and eat. (Having just eaten dinner, I skipped the "eat" part and packaged it up in some of my famous Schnucks Olive Bar containers and placed all but one in the freezer.)