Pinto bean red chili

Should be red beans, but those disappeared somehow. 

This is the halfway point. 

All the above cooking was to brown the beef first and then get the beans cooked to softness.

Tomato paste was left out until now due to its acid, and molasses and brown sugar left out until now too. So the whole pot changed color and thickness with the addition of those last things and with additional heat it is a completely different and full-flavored chili.  

BLAM sweet. Then HOT. Real hot. Maybe too hot. 

Do not ever buy chili powder, it is a waste, plus it makes you ill.

It makes me ill, every time, so you should stop using it. Besides, you have all the things that go into chili powder anyway which are added to chili separately so it is doubling up on their unknown combination. 

Chili powder has garlic powder in it, and we use real garlic, so that is ridiculous right there, to double that element but with a worse version of it. All recipes for chili powder that you will see online will say:

* cumin

* garlic powder

* cayenne powder

* paprika

* oregano  

Sometimes they have 

* coriander powder

Along with various types of chile powders, or whole chiles rendered to powder; ancho, cascabel, arbol, chipotle, etc.

So you can have your own spice powders cycling through your spice cabinet, or have those and a bottle of chili powder with the same elements sitting there aging until you need that precise combination again. 

Crostini with feta

Little crusts, toasts, toastettes, the more you pile on them the more they appear to be pizzaettes. 

feta and  red onion

oregano

mountain joy. 

olive oil

These are so light they disintegrate upon contact.  They can hardly be eaten at all, held together by the cheese.

This particular sourdough culture does have its unique qualities, and this fragile light skin apparently is part of it. This is not a true sourdough loaf, rather, it is regular dough with sourdough starter in it and I've been enjoying it all week like this and as small sandwiches. I honestly do not know why it has stayed soft and fresh and useful this long.

Summer salad

It's like Chopped on the Food Network except no basket.  I scrounge around and see what is there, arrange it on a plate artistically and then act like I intended all that. 

And I sort of did intend that since the original shopping way back there was my picking process, if not with this specific thing in mind.

Sourdough breadsticks

I have not had such breadsticks as these.

Made with Denver wild yeast culture, a sourdough, usually this bread will be heavier than regular bread with sourdough flavor concentrated in denser thicker crust unsuitable for things like sandwiches, pain perdu. But not this. This bread is light and airy inside and mostly dry and the crust is thin, exceedingly thin, and delicate. Crisped by finishing minutes on the oven stone. 

Fast too, for sourdough, four hours total. 

For even lighter, faster behaving dough, with even thinner lighter crust, leave out the salt and put it all on the surface of the dough right before baking at the end after spraying with concentrated baking soda solution.

Sourdough pretzel

Wow, just wow. Best pretzel I ever had, but not as a pretzel, as a breadstick. 

This is the pet sourdough starter portion that is usually discarded refreshed with water and enough flour to form dough. It is a wet dough and proofs quickly for sourdough culture. It is very fast to get going. 

It wanted to be bread. It needs to be stiffer. Rerolled with additional flour.

But still too wet. This pretzel came out the way baguettes should come out, with an incredibly light and crisp crust and tender bread inside. I've never had a pretzel or breadstick this tender and marvelous. I do not think I can duplicate this. The thing that I did that was different was spray it with concentrated baking soda solution, to replace lye, because I did not want to mess with that. The lightness the spraying produced is extraordinary. Baked at 425℉. 

I cannot overstate how different this is. Usually sourdough like this will produce a thick heavy crust, a pretzel almost entirely crust, but that did not happen. 

If this were reliable enough to pull off for a diner party, it would be extraordinary hot out of the oven as impeccably light breadsticks.