Chili con Comfort

There is a book by Ned Young, called “Zoomer’s Summer Snowstorm”.  Recently, my youngest picked it as his nightly read.  In the story, Zoomer, a young dog, is so hot on this one summer day that he asks his mom if he can make himself a sno-cone.  In the process of making the yummy summer-time treat the sno-cone machine gets out of hand, there by creating the summer snowstorm.  In the end, Zoomer is so cold, he asks his Mom to make chili for supper.  

With that little background information, I may now get to the point of today’s post.   After much wishing and hoping (and even a request put in to Santa Claus)…we are getting a bit of snow here in Southeastern, MA.  So, before it all began, I needed to stop at the grocery store to pick up something for supper.    My youngest, when asked, suggested chili, “like in the summer snowstorm book, Momma, because ya know, it’s going to be snowing later.”  Now, my youngest will eat chili but he doesn’t like the beans  (which, yes, sort of defeats the point of eating chili).  He was adamant, however, that he would enjoy the supper and not complain about the beans in any way, because, lo and behold, we could also use a recently received Christmas gift in our dinner preparations.

 

Despite his disdain for beans, chili served up from these baked tortilla bowls added an element of fun and renewed an otherwise common meal.   Just in case, though, I put an additional portion of meat into the chili, along with corn, and I provided Tostitos Scoops on the side just to make sure my youngest would gobble down his share of comfort food…minus the beans.