Chili Making Time!

Since it was rainy and a little cool yesterday I thought it was time to make some chili. I don't make just a little pot of chili and to be honest if I had bigger pots I would make more than I do!

I got a little curious about how much this batch of chili weighs so I sat down and figured it out. Below is the list of ingredients and some of the weights are approximate.
 6lbs of cooked hambuger
2 large diced onions
6 packets of McCormick Chili Seasoning
4 cans (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
2 cans diced tomatoes and green chili's
6 cans (16 oz) of chili beans

This worked out to be about 344 ounces of chili, which is a whooping 21.5 pounds of chili! Now you would think this would last a person a long time, maybe through the winter, but not at my house. Shiane and Chuck love my chili as does Shiane's friend Alicia. Anytime Alicia knows I make chili she comes over, heck she has even just shown up when I was making it and I ask her "how did you know I was making chili" and she laughed and said "I could smell it!".

One thing I do like to do is get out my loaf pans and put chili in them. I have two large loaf pans I use and then 6 small loaf pans. The smaller ones are just the right size for a bowl of chili. After getting the loaf pans filled with the chili and wrapped with plastic wrap I put the pans on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. I like to use cookie sheets so that I can stack the pans and not have to worry about them falling over and such. This process usually takes about a day for the chili to freeze well. Once it is frozen I drop the pan in some hot water to loosen up the chili out of the pans and then pop the frozen blocks in freezer bags. I use to vacuum seal the bags so they would stay fresher longer but the kids generally eat it fast enough that I don't have to worry about freezer burn. Oh, another reason I like the loaf pans is because the chili stacks nicely in the freezer.