Feeding people

     I’m not very good at making kid-friendly meals. I know to prepare meals with lots of separate ingredients, so each person can choose what they want, but I always end up including something that is viewed suspiciously by the kids in my life. Tacos sounded great, but then I mistakenly made the beans from scratch instead of opening a can of refried beans. Spaghetti seems like it will work, but I make my own sauce, and you can see those pesky chunks of onion and green pepper.
     While camping this weekend, though, I stumbled on a very kid-friendly dinner. We had chili mac. I made a big batch of mild vegetarian chili, and you could ladle it on top of macaroni and top it with ground turkey, cheese, corn, sour cream, and hot sauce. In practice, that meant that a five –year-old could carefully eat separate portions of macaroni, cheese, corn, and maybe a taste of a bean, while the grownups piled everything in one bowl.
     One thing that makes chili extra delicious is good hot sauce. I make my own, because it’s cheaper that way. Since it got rave reviews, I thought I’d include the oh-so-easy recipe here.

½ can adobo peppers in sauce (freeze the other half for the next time you make this)
1 c. water
½ c. apple cider vinegar
1 t. onion powder
½ t. garlic powder
Puree and keep in the fridge. Mine has never gone off, but I tend to eat up the above recipe in under six months.