The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [160]
After pulling the meat into bite-sized shreds and reducing the braising liquid, I spent the next couple of hours rounding it out with other ingredients—tomatoes, onions, peppers of all stripes, fresh corn, more bacon, ground-up chorizo sausage, canned pumpkin, pinto beans, more beer, lots of spices. It was a long process, one that I was familiar with from entering plenty of other Chili Takedowns.
While the meat was braising, I’d grabbed some lunch. I didn’t feel like spending much, after buying so many ingredients for the chili, so I opened the drawer filled with takeout menus and picked out the one for the nearest Chinese takeout restaurant. I wasn’t in the mood for meat for some reason, either, so I ordered tofu with broccoli. It was tempting to ask for my order to be delivered. In my building’s lobby, I frequently saw deliverymen heading upstairs with steaming bags or leaving on their battered bicycles. A lot of times, these deliverymen looked like they were past middle age. It made me sad to see them riding through the busy streets in the rain, wearing ponchos, and carefully balancing their food packages on the handlebars. I couldn’t fathom someone my father’s age having to do that, and for just one person’s measly lunch. So I walked the three blocks to the restaurant in the rain to pick up my polystyrene foam-packed order.
It was more food than I was hungry for, but I finished it anyway. It wasn’t particularly good, either. Afterward, I felt a little sick. I thought about skipping dinner and just seeing whatever food would be at Nora’s party, but around six o’clock I was feeling like a snack again and headed outside to grab a slice of pizza from a local pie shop.
It was ten o‘clock when I got to Nora’s, and the combination of the mediocre pizza, the Chinese food, the doughnut, and the constant tastes of the chili I was cooking throughout the day had my stomach feeling more than off. Still, I tried bites of the snacks at Nora’s party as I sipped wine. The theme of Nora’s birthday party was 2050, the year that some scientists predicted the world would end thanks to global warming. To go with the heat theme, all the food at the party was spicy. Nora also had decked her home in streamers made from twisted plastic shopping bags, and various signs of apocalyptic doom.
I woke the next morning with half an hour to spare before I was due at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It was still raining. The party had gone on until well past three in the morning, when I decided to leave. I was glad I’d finished all my chili making the day before. Since the Botanic Garden was so close to my home, I was able to carry my pot of chili and containers with extra garnish there on my own.
The Chili Takedown was just one event that was taking place at the all-day Chile Pepper Fiesta. There were at least two dozen other tastings, demonstrations, lectures, and workshops related to the chili pepper, and the highlight of this year’s festival was hands down Pete Seeger’s performance on the open-field stage. The legendary folk musician, now in his eighties, rarely performed anymore, and when he did it was often for nonprofit or educational events like this one. When I found out I’d be participating in the festival, I’d sent my parents an excited e-mail. My dad is a longtime fan of Pete Seeger and other folk musicians from his hippie days in the 1960s. Even so, I wasn’t expecting the response I got from him, a few days later. “I may not be able to convince Mom to come along, but I’ll be there,” he wrote. “I’ve seen Pete Seeger twice—once in Berkeley in the 1960s and another time when he played in New Jersey in the 1980s. So I’ll come out to your chili contest and get to see him again.”
As I sat with the other chili contestants and Matt, I felt a little nervous about my