Bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship is a waste. Doing what you think will make everyone happy will more often than not accomplish little beyond an equal distribution of dissatisfaction. And so I made this chili from the Obama family recipe not merely as a partisan balance to the famous Mittloaf, but because DAMMIT I WANTED TO.
Which is odd because typically I don't do chili. It's not my favorite. Chunky meat stew... whee?
But I expect a great deal from the president, to include recipes. And I have to say the recipe, as written, left me cold. The most interesting ingredient? A whole teaspoon of turmeric. I realize this should all be viewed through the political lens (chili = HELL YEAH AMERICA WOOO!) and can't go too far afield ingredient-wise, but come on; give the food-conscious something to work with.
So I tweaked it a bit. Instead of ground beef, I used ground lamb. And in place of the prescribed green bell pepper, two charred poblano peppers. And that made for a really good chili*. The gaminess from the lamb worked well with the spice mixture, and the poblanos bring a little more heat to the affair (the heat of poblanos can wildly vary from pepper to pepper, but their flavor is vastly superior to that of green bell peppers, which to my reckoning are largely useless).
More to the point, I'd say it surpassed Team Romney's loaves of meat.
However, I've created a dilemma here: would the president's chili have conquered the mighty Mittloaf had I not tweaked it? We'll never know.
Is my dirty hippie liberalism tipping the scales in favor of the president? It's possible. Hell, even probable.
But, again, I won't force bipartisanship just for the sake of it. You might call it cheating. I call it principle.
*Judging from the comments on the Pinterest page, there is some debate as to whether this actually is "chili" as vaguely defined by the cosmos. I confess to not giving a damn.
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