Food In The Fort

Oh, Bisquick, is there anything you can’t do? Whether it be your namesake quick biscuits, hangover-easy chocolate chip pancakes, or any one of your myriad of Impossibly Easy™ creations, Bisquick seems to be the baking mix of a thousand recipes. Except everything comes out with the taste and texture of Bisquick. This browine recipe I found on the web is no exception.

Now don’t get me wrong; I love Bisquick. It’s an essential ingredient in any bachelor’s apartment or hurried household’s pantry. In fact, if you don’t have any Bisquick in the house, I recommend you run out right now and buy a 5lb. box. Believe me, it’ll last you forever and assuming you have eggs, water and milk on hand you’ll never be at a loss for a crumbly bread-like side or dessert. Just resign yourself now to the fact that you will never make anything with Bisquick that quite resembles whatever-the-hell it’s supposed to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Leo is a godless heathen, while Catherine is just a plain heathen but we live in Fort Wayne, Indiana which is nicknamed The City Of Churches. It’s true. You can’t go more than a half mile in any direction downtown without running into a church or overhearing some pious pontiff haranguing the flock about the sorry state of the place where they’ll be spending their afterlife. So we thought it only appropriate to name one of the hottest chili recipes we’ve ever tasted here at Food In The Fort after that mythical lake of fire.

This is truly a collaborative recipe. We made it last week when we suddenly decided that we absolutely had to have chili. Of course, last week was actually the first week of April. We’ve been too busy to write this up before now (something about buying a house…) but it is true that we had a sudden craving for chili, whatever month it was.

Leo concocted the basic recipe out of four or five of his favorites with the guiding philosophy that if a little is good, a lot must be better. By the time Catherine came home, the paint was peeling off the ceiling and god knows what sort of damage Leo had inflicted on his intestinal tract in the sampling. So Catherine felt that a little mediation was in order. Leo rambled on for quite some time about balancing PH levels, but in the end Catherine added the cocoa, sugar and extra cornstarch because they sounded good. Presto! The chili was nice and hot; just shy of necessitating a trip to the ER.

We couldn’t have been happier with this Rube Goldberg of a recipe. It goes great with the sun-dried tomato and jalapeño cornbread and gives sinners like us a little taste of what’s to come. Read the rest of this entry »