Bush’s Baked Beans Chili

I normally don’t meal plan the week of Thanksgiving.  It’s a short work week, and let’s be honest, I think most of us can eat through our fridge and pantry for a few days without running to the grocery store.  Case in point – in the top basket of my freezer I found a few frozen bagels.  I set an everything bagel in a ziploc bag on my counter overnight.  I hate defrosting bread in the microwave because I think that it gets too hard if you end up cooking it.  I pulled out most of the inside bread and ended up with a 2 ounce bagel – with a scrambled egg, ham and cheese, breakfast was delish.  Pretty sure the everything bagel is the best thing ever invented.

Oh wait – the next best thing ever invented?  Cream cheese stuffed everything chicken that my friend Nicole made – this recipe is on the very top of my must make dishes.  Probably next Monday for #meatmonday when Hannah is at school.  Genius Nicole.  Genius.

It was birthday celebrations for one of our named partners, and his very favorite pie is cherry pie.  The second request was peach pie.  Only one tiny problem with that.  Um, neither fresh cherries or peaches are in season right now.  So I had to go the canned route – I ended up using Mariano’s brand canned pie filling.  I had to strategically place the pies in the back of my car – you know, next to the bag with my workout shoes and my gym bag.

I actually had work to do yesterday which is a nice change of pace for me.  I didn’t eat breakfast until around 9:45 and around 1 thought I’d head to the gym.  I checked my phone and it said it was still 31 degrees out, so I thought a walk outside was out of the question.  Um, no!  It was awesome!  No wind and it felt great.  Those shoes?  Sent to me by blog reader Jaclyn – she had a couple pairs of Merrell shoes she never wore and knew that I had the same size shoe (well, one foot anyway!) and they are perfect for this time of year.  Thanks again Jaclyn!

So Hannah accuses me of having too many cans of Bush’s beans in the house and has banned me from buying any more until I use up the ones I have.  It is a little ridiculous to have twenty cans of beans, but they are my favorite.  So when I was trying to come up with stuff to make with what I had, I decided to try using baked beans as one of the three kinds of beans that I used.

So those three beans were the inspiration for this pantry/fridge chili.

This makes a lot too.  Jacob and I ate it for dinner Sunday night, and I had some for lunch, two of my bosses had it – both declared it amazing.  Duh, because I made it.  And I still probably have 3 servings left.  Nice!

I had planned to go to the gym after work for strength, but my blood sugar was only 142 – a bit too low for me and I didn’t want to have to eat more to work out, so I ran some errands.  First up?  Getting my eyes threaded at Wal-mart.  Fuck that hurts – I sent this picture to Hannah and said “only the young girl was working” which means she’s not the most gentle when it comes to threading, but she’s literally done in 120 seconds.  But a couple hours later the redness and swelling goes away.  With waxing it would take days!

I found two pork chops in the freezer too and thawed those out for dinner.  #meatmonday!  Jacob loves sauerkraut as much as I do, and I had a can of potatoes, so sautéed the potatoes, sauerkraut and pork chops all in my cast iron skillet.  Once the pork was done, I took everyone out of the pool, and added 1/3 cup of water to deglaze the pan, added one tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of sriracha mustard that my friend and blog reader Laura gave me – so good!  It cooked for about a minute and got nice and thick.  I asked Jacob to taste it before I put it on his pork chop and he said “you can pretty much put that sauce all over my food.”

So even though my dinner looks like 50 shades of beige, this was a delicious, super quick dinner.  Gotta love a quick pan sauce!

Two more days until a long weekend – woop!  Don’t forget to enter my recipe contest – you can find out the info here – I’ll accept recipes until the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and will announce the winner next Monday – a $50 peanut prize pack!

**********************

This week ends my year of firsts without Tony.  While he wasn’t exactly conscious on Thanksgiving, he was still here.  My Mom brought in turkey dinners from Boston Market.  One year ago today I got the call from Tony.  He’d been in the second hospital for nearly a week.  I had planned on working the three days of Thanksgiving week and planned to spend the four day weekend at the Chicago hospital.  But he called my office the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  His voice was weak.  He said “the doctors just came by and told me I’m dying.”  What??!!!  Tears immediately started running down my face.  My boss and another partner were in the office and I yelled “I have to go, my husband is dying!”  In my head I thought he was dying like right that second.  As the tears streamed down my face in the 40 minute drive to the hospital, I just kept saying “stay alive until I get there!”

Seeing his face when he saw mine is something I will never forget.  I hated that I couldn’t be with him all the time, but with all of our trips back and forth to mayo I was out of days off from work.  We made phone calls.  We discovered his son Joe was already in town – a trip he planned a month before not knowing this trip would be the last time he’d see his Dad.  That night Hannah brought me clothes and Joe and I ended up staying at a Marriott right by the hotel that night.  I had to search back, and realized I did write about that night after Tony died.  I haven’t read all my posts from last year yet, because it’s still painful.  I am thankful to have this blog though because it captured my thoughts and emotions that I otherwise would have probably forgotten.

So this week, as we roll into Thanksgiving Day, be thankful for your spouse, significant other, your children, family and friends.  Because in the end that’s really all that matters.  Hugs!