Chili and Poker

Friday night it was time for our regular Friday night poker game, this week it was at one of my friend's houses. So we all arrive and about a half hr into the game he announces that the food is ready, so off he goes to the kitchen and comes back with hot dog buns and puts them out on the table, now my personal opinion about hotdogs at a poker game is that they are a decent basic not expensive and easy to make food that can be eaten with one hand and is clean, but that was not all he again returned with a pot of hot dogs and a big pot of chili.

Now I love chili dogs, but not at the poker game and I instantly knew it was going to be one of those games.

And it could not have been more then 5 or 10 minutes into the game before I was proven right. One of my friends put a lot of chili on his hotdog and it soaked up right thru the bun and the bun fell apart and chili was all over him and the table.

So we had to stop for at least 15 minutes while we cleaned the table and the guy who spilled the chili got himself cleaned up. Now luckily that was the only major incident to occur, but the game suffered all night. People constantly had to wash their hands, and the chili was a little spicy and as causing people to drink more, and once you start to get a buzz you start to drink even more, so before long most of us were drunk and acting stupid, but I wanted to play poker.

So even though the evening was fun the food definitely affected the way the game went, but the chili was pretty good, so I do not recommend this for your next poker game, but it may be good when watching the SuperBowl.

SuperBowl Chili

Original recipe yield: 12 servings.
Prep Time:10 Minutes
Cook Time:1 Hour 30 Minutes
Ready In:1 Hour 40 Minutes
Servings:12

INGREDIENTS:
2 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1 cup water
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/3 cup ketchup
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon chili powder
Crushed red pepper flakes to taste

DIRECTIONS:
Crumble ground beef into a Dutch oven over medium heat. Stir in water, and mash ground beef thoroughly with a potato masher. Stir in tomato sauce, ketchup, salt, pepper, sugar, and chili powder; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer, 60 to 90 minutes, until the sauce reaches a medium consistency that is not too soupy.