Chili Con Carne (super simple quick recipe)

If this recipe is not considered simple, I don't know what is!   I got this from an old "Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book" which I gave to my mother back in 1961 or 1962.  You do not need anything "fancy" to put this together.

INGREDIENTS and DIRECTIONS, all together in one list:

Brown in 3 tablespoons hot fat (less than this amount is okay)...

     1 lb. ground beef (I used just 1/2 pound and that works, too)

     1 and 1/4 cup minced onion

Add to the above and cook for 10 min...

     2 of 15 oz. can cooked kidney beans (I drained each, but probably wouldn't have had to.)  For a different look, you can use one can of light colored kidney beans, and one of the dark red variety.

     1 of 10.75 oz. can condensed tomato soup, as is.

     

Combine the following in a small bowl, stir until totally smooth, and then blend into the above...

     1 tablespoon chili powder (more can be added at the table)

     1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

     3 tablespoons water

     1 teaspoon salt  (If, out of habit, you already salted the hamburger/onion mixture as it was frying, omit this.)

Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, for 45 minutes.  Serve hot... with crackers or hot corn bread, or ???  (Instead of following this last step of "cooking over low heat" for 45 minutes, I put the chili into an enameled cast iron pot, covered it, and stuck it into a 350-degree oven for 30-40 minutes.)   M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m!

Above:  Little squares of sliced Aged Swiss 

Cheese tossed atop the dollop of sour cream.

Serve with toppings of your choice:  Crackers, sour cream, snipped green onions, grated cheese, cubes of cheese, broken corn chips, etc.

Oatmeal Butternut Squash Cookies*

Because "Gardener" had an abundant crop

of Butternut Squash, I looked for extra

ways to incorporate them into our diet...

What better way than to eat 

the squash in COOKIES*!?!?!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 and 1/3 cup old-fashioned oats
• 1 and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon salt (I used Himalyan salt)

......

• 2 sticks butter (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup white granulated sugar

.......

• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

......

• 1 and 1/2 cup baked and pureed (and cooled!) butternut squash 

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix the first SIX ingredients (all of the dry ingredients) until well blended.  Set aside.
2. In a mixer bowl, beat the softened butter, brown sugar, and white sugar for about 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy.   Then, add the one egg, and the vanilla.  Continue beating just until well incorporated.  
3. Add the "set aside" dry mixture to this and beat at low/med. just until blended.  (Dough will be STIFF!)
4. Add the baked/pureed and cooled butternut squash and continue beating ONLY until well mixed.
5. Preheat oven to 350-degrees.  Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.   With dough "drops" not quite the size of a golf ball (I used my cookie dough scopper/dumper for this), bake on parchment paper as follows:
6. Put one oven rack in the upper third of the oven.  Put the other rack in the lower third of the oven. Slide one pan of cookie dough balls on the top shelf, and one on the lower rack.  Bake for 10 minutes.  THEN, ...change the pans around:  Move the top pan to lower shelf, bottom pan to higher shelf--  and bake for ANOTHER 10 minutes. At the end, I had just a single "extra pan"--  so, to bake that, I moved a shelf to the middle-of-the-oven position and baked the last pan for 20 minutes.    DONE!!!   (Because ovens are different, check on the progress of the cookies you bake in your oven.)
7. Cool on pan for about 10 minutes, then finish the cooling on a rack.   When totally cool, you can eat them "as is", or put your favorite kind of glaze frosting on them.  (I used my favorite "browned butter frosting" on some of them, and also sprinkled chopped walnuts on "some".)   Except that I don't add any vanilla, this is a link to how the browned butter icing is made:    http://www.marthastewart.com/314840/brown-butter-icing  

*  I found this cookie recipe on the blog of Life Tastes Good at:  http://ourlifetastesgood.blogspot.com/