For the Sake of Toppings

This year, for the first time ever, I held a New Year’s day get together. Though I had a wonderful New Year’s eve this year (I got to see fireworks!), I’m not big on the holiday.  To make the celebration more my style, I decided to have a small group of people over for a casual dinner of comfort food on New Year’s day.  I set the dinner for later in the evening, so folks had plenty of time to sleep in and recover from the previous night of mayhem.

I decided to make chili.  To be honest, the real reason I like making chili is for the toppings.  Without the toppings, I don’t really care for it that much.  It’s the melted cheese mixed with the spicy beef, sour cream, and ripe avocado that really gets me.  I also put out chopped cilantro and Tobasco.  Brandon is much more the chili connoisseur so I went with his recommendation on the recipe, Halftime Chili from Bon Appetit. There’s a reason this recipe won the Bon Appetit Recipe Sweepstakes, it’s really really good.   I wanted more spice, so I added in two chopped jalapenos and  one chopped poblano pepper.  If you’d like to add those in, throw in the peppers in with the onions and garlic to saute.