Spicing it up!

Ingredients for the Chili and Salsa!

Carla is not a fan of cilantro...

Cooking the Vegetables

The finished product!

      Today was a rather spicy day in our class! We tried out various kinds of chili and salsa. We started out talking about the capsaicin molecule. It is actually partially soluble in water, but quite a bit less than other molecules. Milk is definitely the best way to get rid of the spicy smell of capsaicin along with bread and yogurt. I was a little nervous about making the different kinds of chili because I am not a very big fan of spicy food. However, I was surprised by how much I liked the various chilis and salsa even though they had a little bit of a kick!
      The first type of chili that I tried was our own. It included chili beans, diced-canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, green pepper, oregano, chili powder, and cumin. We decided not to go off of a recipe for our chili, but simply sort of throw it together. Carla Miller and I had made a chili similar to this one earlier in the week, so we decided to model this chili in the same way. At first our chili was a little bland and needed more of a chili taste. So, we decided to add more chili powder. After trying it a second time we decided to add more cumin and also let the chili simmer for a bit longer in order to let the spices sink in. This is what did the trick! The chili tasted much better after letting it simmer! Everyone seemed to really enjoy our chili! It tasted just slightly spicy, with a bit of the chili flavoring from the powder. The oregano also added a bit of an earthy quality and the vegetables added to the chunky texture. The chili was nice and warm, having a nice blend of onion and green pepper flavors. We had a lot of visitors to our station, as people really seemed to enjoy our chili!
      I also really liked one of the other group’s salsas. This was a really fresh tasting salsa with a lot of green peppers and onions. I also liked it because it was not extremely spicy and had a lot of cilantro. The cilantro really gave it that fresh, crisp taste and made the salsa very refreshing. I also really enjoyed one of the other group’s chili. This was a spicier chili and had a lot of black pepper and chipotle spices in it. It had quite a kick to it, but I was surprised by how well I tolerated the spice. It had a very different taste to it which I think was because of the chipotle spices. They also had various types of beans in the chili which added to the hearty taste. The various other salsas and chili’s were also pleasant, but many of them were a little too spicy for my liking. However, today has shown me that I shouldn’t rule out all spicy foods. There may, in fact, be quite a few that I really like!