Winter is the time for warm things. My friend Tish wrote a wonderful post about tea not too long ago that was lovely and brilliant and made me pine for Ireland. So I won’t reiterate her words about tea; you can read them for yourself.

What I will do is take a page from one of my new favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and show you how I make my wonderful, delicious, award-winning Oklahoma chili – without beans – by taking you through a slideshow of sorts. What I love most about this recipe is that you can make it with almost any kind of meat; usually I use beef. On this day, however, I decided I’d go a little healthier and use turkey. Also, as I’ll show you below, you can make it as spicy or mild as you like; I’ll put in what the recipe calls for versus what I actually use, because ’round these parts, we like to occasionally singe off all our taste buds, be it with chili or with some of America’s best Thai and Vietnamese food in the Asian District next door (according to the New York Times, actually).

Ah, but I digress. Today we’re all about [turkey] chili. Those of you from Oklahoma and Texas will know what a perfect social food it is, how wonderful you feel when a group of people is sitting around eating chili. I know I’m excited about it. Let’s get going.

You will need the following:

2-1/2 lb. ground turkey (or ground beef. It’s the same either way).

1 yellow onion. (Can you find the one in this picture?)

8 ounces of beer. I’m using Moosehead, because it’s a personal favorite.

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

2 teaspoons hot sauce (I’m using Cholula, and I always use more than this because I like it HOT.)

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (may vary depending on how hot you like to get)

4 tablespoons chili powder

4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

37 ounces tomato sauce

Got all that? Like Pioneer Woman, I like to get all my stuff together before I get started, then slowly put things away as I’ve used them. Keeps a kitchen nice and clean and orderly, and keeps me from duplicating ingredients, which, with my absentmindedness, is a constant problem. Okay, here we go:

Get a good, serrated knife. I got a new set for Christmas, and I just have to show it off:

Take your serrated knife, and dice up your onion:

If you have a problem with crying whilst you cut onions, you should STOP ANTHROPOMORPHIZING YOUR VEGETABLES!! If that doesn’t work, it helps me to chew on a piece of bread. Okay, that’s cut up.

Now throw it in a large stock pot and let it start cooking. The smell will immediately make your kitchen a fragrant, wonderful place, and people will yell from the living room, “Smells good!”

Now add your ground turkey…

and your 8 ounces of beer. I poured 4 ounces out of this 12-oz. bottle, because I WAS PLANNING TO DRINK THE REST. Now, leave all that in there until the meat is browned.

It’ll look a little bit something like this. Unless you’re using ground beef; then it’ll be browner.

Now add your 37 oz. of tomato sauce. That’s two and a half of these cans here, give or take. With chili it’s not real important to be so accurate.

Then add your pepper…

…and your salt, and all the rest of your ingredients. I didn’t do individual pictures of each one, because that would get a little tedious now, wouldn’t it? At any rate, it’s especially important, with your ground red pepper and the hot sauce, to taste the chili after adding it, because if it’s not spicy enough, you’ll want to add more.  I ALWAYS add more. For this particular recipe I used about 3-1/2 teaspoons of Cholula and twice the recommended amount of ground red pepper. People will love you at this point, because like many good things, chili is often a democracy, and you’ll want to get the Voice of the People in on tasting it here so you’ll be careful not to get it too hot. If there’s one lone voice in the wilderness (or in front of the game) calling for “More Fire! More Fire!” you can just plunk the bottle of Cholula in front of him and let him go to town on his own bowl.

Also? Major props to the Flynns for my awesome two-in-one pepper and salt grinder. That was a Christmas gift last year.

At any rate, your finished product – poured over a bed of crunchy Frito’s and garnished with some shredded cheese – will look a little something like this. Delicious, warm, spicy, and best of all – EASY! People will be begging for your recipe, which is easily doubled or tripled, by the way. It keeps for over a week in the fridge and reheats beautifully.