Tonight we cooked our Christmas present for my dad & brothers – Texas chili complemented by Shiner Bock beer (also from Texas, of course!). We brought all our ingredients over to James & John’s house and then realized they didn’t have a pot big enough to make all the chili. No worries though, we improvised by browning the meat on the stove then dumping it into their giant crock pot, combining everything else in the crock pot, and letting it stew for an hour or so. We used all the hot peppers included with the chili mix, plus some extra peppers I found in J&J’s kitchen. The result was, of course, very spicy and delicious! Dad is losing his edge though, the chili was a bit too hot for him to handle. He didn’t even finish half his bowl.

After dinner we went to Blockbuster and rented Rikki Tikki Tavi for old times sake. For anyone who doesn’t know this story: Rikki Tikki Tavi was our youngest brother John’s absolute favorite movie as a kid. It’s a cartoon movie about a mongoose in India that kills snakes.  I’d be willing to bet that this movie was John’s #1 pick for 10 years running. James and I liked Rikki the first few times we saw it, but after approx 20 viewings it got a little old. Thus, we were reduced to speeding into the movie store ahead of little brother John so we could find & hide Rikki Tikki Tavi from him. Then we’d say to him “Oh, too bad John, someone must have gotten here first and rented it! darn!” We all enjoyed the re-watch, and John even admitted that he wouldn’t want to watch it every weekend now that he’s 21.

Tomorrow we’ll leave Minneapolis in the morning, stop for the night in Dayton, Ohio (halfway point) and then continue on to Wilmington, North Carolina for Christmas.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 4:34 am and is filed under United States Road Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.