Happy New Year!

Last night, I started writing an entry about the day and about New Year’s Eve in general.  I ended up totally scrapping it.  It sounded like I was trying too hard, and it just wasn’t working for me.

Last night, the whole house smelled absolutely wonderful, with the pot roast and the chili cooking for eight hours each.  Even though I wasn’t going to eat the pot roast, it still made my mouth water when I opened the top of the slow cooker to check on it.  I was going to wait to taste the chili until the eight hours were up, but I couldn’t resist.  It was really hot (spicy) and after I tasted it, I had to walk around airing my mouth out.  Tots followed me making the same gasping kind of sound that I couldn’t help myself from making.

Pi said the roast is awesome.  Some of the meat just fell off in the slow cooker, so amongst the super-tasty mushy veggies there were little chunks of super-tasty mushy meat pieces.  A couple of minutes ago, he stood up from his computer chair saying, "Snack snacky snacky," and walked into the kitchen to get himself some more.

I don’t know if you folks know this, but I just love spicy food.  The chili had three whole habaneros, a bunch of crushed red pepper, and a bunch of jalepeno peppers from a container in water.  It was so hot that it took me almost two hours to eat one bowl.  I had to rest in between bites it was so hot.  I was watching a show with my headphones on and Pi had to stop it for a moment.  He told me that I sounded like Darth Vader, the way I was breathing.  Even a whole bunch of cheese thrown in didn’t help much.  I’m definitely going to make my chili like this again.

Earlier in the cooking process, I called Dad for any tips or advice on how to make the pot roast great.  He pretty much told me that I was doing everything right to make a good standard pot roast.  We ended up talking for a while about the different foods we were both cooking.  As it turned out, he was making chili, too!  We also discovered that we both have really old slow cookers that haven’t been used that much.  Strange coincidences.

All in all, we started the new year out pretty good.  It wasn’t a crazy exciting night, but it was great for us.