chili cookoff

yesterday, i am proud to say, i won first place at a chili cook-off! and i was up against some TOUGH competition! i made a white chicken chili (per the request of misty baker) and it was pretty tasty.  i am pretty sure i cheated by putting like 4 cups of cheese in it...no one really even stood a chance. but here is the recipe...it is based off of a recipe that i found here but i made a lot of alterations.

4 chicken breasts
1 carton of chicken broth
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons garlic powder

i put all this in the crock pot overnight, so maybe on low for 8 hours.

i strained out the grossy white fattiness that happens in the broth when you cook chicken this way, shredded the chicken with a fork in the broth and then added....

3 cans great northern beans (really i used canelinni but i'm sure great northerns would be yummier so i'm going to go with that...)
2 cans pinto beans
more oregano (i strained out most of mine when i was straining out the fat so i added more because i love it and it's pretty but you don't have to)

cook this on low for 2 hours (in the crock pot) and then add

1 cup of whipping cream
one 8 oz container of sour cream.
2 cups of monterey jack cheese
1.5 cups of cooked quinoa (i added this because the chili was sooo liquidy and seemed too soupy.  i loved the texture the quinoa added, it was nice a thick and no one even noticed it!  go protein punch!)

cook for one more hour on high

then i added 2 MORE cups of cheese, let it melt, and served it with cilantro on top.  YUM!!!  i wish i had some right this minute to eat.  

here are photos of our cookoff/harvest party.  they're not very good because it was raining cats and dogs but it was still SO fun!!

i'm pretty sad i didn't get any photos of all of the chilis lined up...there were like 12!!  but to take photos of them lined up i would have had to leave the tent i was standing under and i would have died probably.  anyways, it was a fun day with wonderful people and i'm so grateful that we do things like this.

remlinger

we love hanging out with the kings.  and they have adorable children.  lonnie and her adorable children invited us to go to remlinger this week and we had so much fun in the RAIN AND RAIN AND RAIN!  we spent more time in the restaurant and not in the carnival area but i think it was still worth it...the restaurant has a big soft train to climb on and run around pretending to be airplanes.  and we got free punkins when we left! I LOVE FREE PUNKINS!! 

these little tractors are made of metal and weigh about 1000 pounds.  not. intended. for toddlers.  i handed quinn the handles and then let go and he flew forward so fast!  it wasn't funny.  yes it was.  

aaaah!  aaaaaaaah!  soooooo cute!  also, i hope ryan king doesn't see this.  ever.