I need to have sons

Sunday I gave myself a meat facial. I decided to use the leftover meat from making beef stock (which I had separated from the bone and frozen for future use) to make my first chili. I also decided to make another huge pot of chicken noodle soup because lately I've been obsessed with savory soupy things: like ramen and chigae and chicken noodle soup and even Joe's soup dumplings.

So the meat in this chili is really meat from the neck bones and oxtail I used to make the beef stock, and it did not even occur to me that this might wig people out until I revealed such knowledge to my coworker J, whose face instinctively recoiled upon realizing what she had tasted.

Most people are getting slowly acclimatized to the idea of ravioli stuffed with beef check ragu or roasted bone marrow starters, but having now told several other people about the source of "meat" in my chili and receiving similar responses, I can see how I've invaded the sacred domain of chili. Chili should be super safe with good old fashioned ground hamburger meat, which admittedly cooks to a different consistency than the stuff I used.

It's really a shame because while I was frugal in using the leftover meat from making beef stock, I was more generous with the other ingredients. Instead of adding water to get the chili to the right consistency, I added the homemade beef stock, some leftover red wine and leftover white wine. After I ran out of wine, I threw in maybe a cup of water, but for my "cheap chili" experiment, there were some nice things in there.

*sigh* Guess I'll be eating chili for awhile. I really need to make something palate cleansing the next time I do a weekend cooking spree. I'm getting overwhelmed by meat.

And of course I made more bread, which really "balanced" out the lunch menu for the week.

At least I've gotten into making gigantic fruit bowls, now that it's finally hitting me how cheap it is to purchase fresh fruit from Chinatown. I'm starting to eat fruit for breakfast.

The only problem is that I pack the fruit in so tight because I'm running out of saved plastic takeout containers, that I smooshed the fruit a little, so I threw in two tubs of fruit into the freezer to turn into smoothies later.

In that one day I made way too much food for one person to eat, especially considering that I misjudged that I would have to eat all of the chili, and there was enough in there to feed a family of eight. Then there was the soup and the bread and the fruit. I was also intending on making Caeser salad, but thankfully I ran out of time again.

I am incapable of cooking consistently for one. When I have a family, I am going to need to do some voodoo-hoodoo dances and wish me some boys because I can't imagine girls being quite as adept as boys at plowing through obscene amounts of food. I mean, maybe I'll luck out and have some truly energetic and athletic baby girl who will grow up into some young lithe colt who can just consume and burn calories like nobody's business, but judging from the fact that I dread the three flights of stairs it takes to reach word processing at work, that is probably unlikely.

My brother on the other hand, will sometimes snack on an entire family-sized bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Candy while watching television. (BTW, I just went to the company website, and just seeing the trademark bag immediately brought the scent of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to mind, and for a moment, I seriously was trying to figure out how my monitor was spewing chocolate/peanut-butter aroma.)