Can't sleep. You fucks get to suffer too.

Got into a friendly argument at work with one of the sales weasels. He felt that chilli was ground beef, a can of beans and a can of tomatoes with a $1.29 package of seasoning mixed in.

I was fucking appalled. We bantered for a bit, and before I knew it we'd agreed on a chilli cookoff at work this last monday.

I made my chilli from scratch. Well, sort of. I didn't raise the cow or grow the tomatoes or chili peppers or anything.

I did however go out and but 2 lbs of ground beef, 2 pounds of stewing beef, fresh chili powder, cumin, lime, onion, red pepper, stewed tomatoes and oregano along with a can of shitty beer to make chilli with.

I went with a classic texas red. Made the gravy first and then grabbed a stick blender and worked my sauce base until it was liquid. Then I browned all the meat as best I could and added it to the sauce. This was after taking all the stewing beef and cutting it all into cubes about a centimeter acroos at most, then dousing it with salt and leaving it to bathe in the sodium chloride for a while. Then came the spices.

Oh, the motherfucking spices....

The fresh chili powder I got? Not so fresh. Christ. Went back out to a grocery, (At 7 pm on a Sunday...) and rebought more chili powder. Went back to wrk. More cumin, more chili powder, more oregano. About a half tablespoon at a time. Flavor slowly seeps in, and at about 2 am in the morning... it's decent. Acceptable. It's a little acidic, so I added about a quarter teaspoon of sugar and that leveled it out nicely.

Went to bed, slept for about four hours, got up at six and checked it again. It's decent. Good enough that if I actually went to a chili cookoff I'd feel like I was representing.

Took it to work. Competed. boss decided to have a survivor style vote. I lost.

Ugh.

The part that really fucks me off, was my opponent did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Can of beans, can of tomatoes, ground beef and a package of spices. Oh.... and his secret weapon. A quarter cup of brown sugar.

His chilli was practically sweet and sour. And the office liked his better.

Is there a point to this story? Yes, there is.

1) The people in my office don't know what the fuck chilli should taste like.

2) I obsess on shit like this way too much.

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BROWN FUCKING SUGAR? IN CHILLI? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!