Max: Blog Jazz

For the vast majority of the past few years, my weekend has been Tuesday and Wednesday, even back when I was working at GuiTarget. It seems to have become the prvailing pattern. So, for me, today is Saturday. It started off as all good Saturdays, even the ones that come on Tuesday, with a nice sleep in. I dragged my ass out of bed around 9am. At one time in my life, 9am qualified as early - or even as bedtime. But I seem to have finally settled into a 9 to 5 routine.

I made my daily sacrifice to the gods of personal hygiene. One of the downsides of sleeping in is that I miss Morning Edition on NPR which I listen to on my shower radio the rest of the week. Diane Rheme is okay, but not really my cup of boiled leaf extract. So, I turned to St. Louis's commercial rock stations for shower time entertainment. As usual, they were more commercial than rock. Although I did get to hear a coupld of cool Todd Rungren tunes.

It is February, and I do live in St. Louis, so it was about 60+ sunny degrees out today. This winter has been more like spring. Something about sunshine and temps in the 60 to 70 degree range brings out the all too rare ambitious side of me. Sadly, in my case ambition generally means doing almost anything outside of spending the day watching TV or reading.

I headed off to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk. While cruising down Lemay Ferry with the windows down, I was struck with an inspiration. I wanted to make chili. Then I decided I wanted to make fajitas. I knew I couldn't do both, so I decided that if they had skirt steak at the store, it would be fajitas. Lately, I have not seen any skirt steak in any of my usualy grocery haunts. Today was no exception. So, chili it was to be.

When I speak of chili, I speak of mid-western chili. I know I am going to offend a lot of southwestern chili purist when I say this, but chili can contain beans. Yeah. That's right. I said it. At its heart, chili is meat and heat. That is, beef (usually) either in ground or stew meat format and chili peppers. For some, that is all chili ever can, will or should be. Me, I am a fan of most of the varitions on classic chili con carne that have sprung up around this country. Sure, a classic bowl of red is a beautiful thing. But that does not mean it can't be adapted.

I say with great pride that this is the greatest pot of chili I have ever made. I browned about two pounds of groung beef, a hamburger friendly 70 percent fat variety. To this, I added a diced yellow onion, a diced banana pepper, a diced jalapeno, diced tomato and unspiced tomato sauce. This I simmered four about three hours. I then threw in a can of refried beans (great bean flavor and an excellent thickener) and two cans of dark navy beans. I threw in about a tablespoon and a half of kosher salt - a long slow cook can mute flavors and a bit of salt can bring them back to life - and about a tablespoon of course ground pepper. I think next time I may double the jalapeno and banana pepper.

Though the temps screamed, "SPRING," it is still winter. It is 4:30 and the sun is starting to leave us. I cannot wait for Spring to start in earnest when the sun to last well into the evening.

Outside of making chili, I made my ealier post, did some laundry and just spent a fair amount of time outside. The temps are sue to drop tomorrow and I wanted to get as much other this day soaked up as I could.

Now I am sitting, writing this. I have no point to this post in mind. I am just writing whatever pops into my head. I have Medeski, Martin and Wood's End of the World Party (Just in Case) playing in iTunes. It is one of the best albums I have heard. MM&W have managed to take the trad jazz trio into an incredible direction. I can't even really describe it. Just jump into iTunes and listen to the samples.

Well, I need to drop off my tax papers and then vist the Mrs. at work.

Catch y'all later.