dutch oven

December 16

It’s still cold outside. Really cold. In fact a few minutes before I went to write this, the following message came over the notification on my phone:

Extreme Cold Warning

Issued at 19:22 Friday 16 December 2016
A period of very cold wind chills is expected.

Clear skies and cold Arctic air are causing temperatures throughout Alberta to plummet this evening and wind chill values are already reaching -40 in several regions.

…and it goes on, generally informing readers how not to die of hypothermia tonight while they sleep. Welcome to Canada, folks!

Because of the cold weather and despite the fact that we’re still a few slabs of quartz short of a full kitchen, I was able to piece together a rather respectable chili tonight for dinner, chopping veggies at the dining table and generally trying to limit my mess. And it helped the whole production along that we had a brand new cast iron dutch oven to break in, too.

Or as Claire says: “Ahhhh! Why did you let him buy more cast iron, mom!”

I took a bit of some cash I got for my birthday recently and invested it in yet another piece of kitchen kitsch that will likely outlive me. It turns out that pre-holidays shopping is almost as good as Boxing Day or Black Friday sales. (The kid is gonna be cooking in style… at least some day when I’m through with it all and she inherits it all!) We rounded out our cast iron collection with a 7 quart (roughly 7 litre for we not as familiar with crazy american sizing) dutch oven. It’s weighs about fifteen pounds and sits on the stovetop like a glorious cauldron of epic cooking awesomeness. And it simmered up one heck of a chili.

I helped, too.

And Claire actually ate most of her serving… despite the beans.