Chili and Fries (not to be confused with Chili Fries)

Oh my god, the amount of chili in this house is a little overwhelming. That batch I made the other night, when my husband was out of town and an hour-or-so-long cooking session sounded just right, and hey, I could eat the leftovers the next day? It's still there. The leftovers from the original cooking night had to be distributed between two large containers, one of which I managed to finish myself. The other which had to be delved into tonight. But no matter--it's been icy and gray here, so chili seems to fit the occasion. Even if it is going on two days of straight chili consumption for me.

Normally my heavenly cornbread serves as a side for a batch of chili, but since I had plenty of Yukon gold potatoes leftover from my mashed potato exploration, I decided to make a batch of baked fries. And I swear--in fact, I can almost guarantee--that you will love these. You will love these much better than those yellow sticks you get at the drive-thru. For years, I absentmindedly ate those glistening sticks of what I assume were once potatoes. I nom, nom, nommed them away, ignoring the under-salting, the over-salting, the sagginess. Fries were supposed to taste that way, right? Yeah, not so much.

And these baked fries are so, so simple. Not as simple as letting Mr. McDonald stick a batch of potato lumps into a deep fryer and letting the cooking oil suck the living daylight out of what used to be a vegetable. But simple enough. In fact, I've covered this recipe in an earlier post. But I never went into how much I freakin' love these things. No other fry measures up to it now. It's the perfect blend of soft and crispy, of seasonings, of fresh taste. And hey, it looks like a potato, not some mutant version of its former self.

In the original post, I mentioned the use of russet potatoes. This recipe also works well with new potatoes, fingerling potatoes...whatever you want to use, and in whatever way you choose to slice or cube it. But again, I prefer Yukon gold. Just cut, coat in olive oil, salt, pepper, season/herb (I used fresh thyme this go-round), and pop into the oven. It's 20 minutes baking time total.

I didn't snap any pictures of dinner, because there are only so many times you can take a picture of chili, but I did get some pics of the best part of dinner tonight: dessert. Every once in a blue moon, I make a quick five-minute trip from work to a local bakery: Our Daily Bread. Now owned by a French pastry chef, the bakery is very inconspicuous (as far as I know, the official name of the bakery isn't even visible in the little shopping center in which it's located). Surrounded by CVS, a Curves, some random electronics store, it's a happy little surprise every time I walk in the door. You can check out their options online, but I went for a tiramisu, a "berry"-misu, and a classic eclair today. The eclair was saved for tomorrow, but the others were scarfed down in no time.