Chilly Chili Weekends

During this weekend that just passed nearly every female member of my family headed to her own kitchen and cooked up some version of chili. My daughter made vegetarian, my mom made mild, and my sisters toyed with heat. I spent a few hours on Saturday experimenting with the best flavors of traditional Cincinnati chili for a Called to the Table column. Maybe we have some sort of cooking ESP and channeled one another, or maybe it was just a perfect weekend for chili.

One of the first scholarly articles most foodways students (should) read is Timothy Lloyd's The Cincinnati Chili Culinary Complex. He explores the history of Cincinnati chili and explains how it came to define the region and provide identity to the city and her neighborhoods. Lloyd got me excited about studying not just food, but how food and region and rituals and identity and culture and all that good stuff interact.