Not Your Average Super Bowl Chili

This coming Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday. For some it will be all about the game, but for many it's all about the food. Hearty, stick-to-your-ribs food. When I hear "Super Bowl", I think "chili".

One of our freezers is currently filled with my husband's most recent chili creation. He's appropriately named it "Wilderness Chili" because it was made with ground caribou, bear, and plenty of local venison courtesy of our neighbors and their recent hunting excursions in and out of Indiana. My husband's concoction is loaded with red meat, black beans, our own canned tomatoes, hot peppers from our fall harvest, strong spices, a bottle (or two) of beer, and a generous splash of his homemade Wesseler's Serious Hot Sauce. The ultimate manly meal.

Could there be, I wondered, a yin to that yang? Was there such a thing in the culinary universe as a girly chili?

I searched through my collection of cookbooks to find just the right recipe. I wanted something with chicken and white beans in it, lightly spiced. My efforts were rewarded when I found a "Lavender Chicken Chili with White Beans" in The Lavender Cookbook. I had a packet of culinary lavender from Willowfield Lavender Farm on hand, plenty of local chicken in the freezer, lots of chicken broth left over from last week's soup making marathon, and some beautiful white Vintage Cheddar from the Swiss Connection in the fridge. I was ready to experiment!

The results were wonderful. This recipe makes a "kinder, gentler" chili ever so faintly scented with lavender, slightly spicy from just a hint of hot pepper, and deliciously savory with both ground and diced chicken and white beans. To go with it, I adapted Mrs. Graham's Perfect Cornbread recipe and made white cornmeal mini-muffins using Bonneyville Mills white cornmeal, lavender sugar, and just a pinch of ground culinary lavender. Together they made the ultimate girly meal!

This is clearly not your average Super Bowl chili but I think both of them could co-exist quite nicely in their parallel universes at your Super Bowl Party on Sunday.

You'll find the chili and cornbread recipes in the Winter Recipes section on this site.