Victoria.I.Am.

I've decided that that's my new name for today; Victoria.I.Am.  Tomorrow I may be...some other name.  Or no particular name at all, but today...Victoria.I.Am!  Because today I am Awesome, and I'll tell you why.

 I....can make CHILI!!

And not just any chili -

 Wait, hold that.  I don't like the spelling of the word "chili".  I hereby change it to "chilley" because the i-l-i hurts my eyes and aggravates my sense of symmetry.  Ok, so, carrying on..

- not just any chilley, but Turkey Chilley....FROM SCRATCH!

And not just any turkey chilley from scratch.....

...(wait for it).....

...but Turkey Chilley From Scratch From My Own Original Off-The-Top-Of-My-Head Recipe!

HA!  

I am now officially awesome, thank you very much!  As of this very minute, I have a pot of turkey chilley simmering on my stove.  I have tasted it and it is delicious and chilley-ish, so I know I did a good job.  Because the true measure of any recipe you make up off the top of your head is whether or not it actually tastes like the intended food and my chilley definitely does! 

Granted, I can't speak for what it'll taste like after a morning of slow simmering, but the initial results were amazing!

Want to know my recipe?  I can't tell you because I already kind of forgot it, but I can give you the general idea if you want to make chilley and trust a total amateur rather than googling it and finding an overwhelming amount of information on the subject of making chilley the "right" way.  Whatever!  (Btw, how hilarious is it that blogger's spell check doesn't recognize the word "googling"?  It's like a Coca Cola exec not being able to identify Coke in a blind taste test!  Anyway...)

Basically, if you're a no-fuss cook like me, and you have no experience cooking chilley and have no desire to sift through millions of opinions and recipes on the matter, do this:

Brown some ground turkey and toss with whatever fresh veggies sound chilley-ish to you; I used onion and garlic because those were all I had on hand, but I would totally have added some bell pepper and maybe even spicy peppers, if I had had them.  And mushrooms.  I will probably try this again with mushrooms.  And maybe celery.  I don't care if celery doesn't sound chilley-ish to anybody else; I like it!  

Dump in a can of diced tomatoes, the best flavor you can find.  I found fire-roasted with garlic at HEB yesterday, which is what started this whole thing by giving me the idea for the chilley in the first place.  You know, one of those impulse buys that actually isn't a load of poo.  

Then, if you're a bean person, add a can of beans (I used red).  Also add an eight ounce can of tomato sauce and season the heck out it!  I more or less used every spice in my cabinet that looked and/or smelled like it belonged in chilley - a couple of bay leaves, seasoned salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, chilley powder.  

That's not hard at all, is it?!  And if, for any reason, you're thinking, "Well, that does sound kind of hard..." I'll say this - ground turkey, onion and garlic, diced tomatoes, beans, tomato sauce and spices.  Mix 'em up however you like!  THAT'S not hard!  Is it!  That's how I cook - by lists, rather than by recipes.  If I can't memorize the ingredients and if I can't work out how to put the dish together just by looking at the ingredients, then that dish is entirely too complicated and I probably won't cook it.  

Right now, I'm letting my chilley simmer, and I'm giving it a taste every so often to keep the flavor on track.  I have no idea how long I'm going to simmer it, or how much or how often I'm going to have to adjust the flavor - I've already added more spices once.  But my chilley's pretty darn good as of right now, so it'll only get better as it cooks!

Well, that's pretty much all I wanted to tell you.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  Thanks for stopping by, love you!