Fresh Tart

Are you cheering for the Badgers in the Rose Bowl? I will be! Yay Bucky!

Are you cheering for the Packers this weekend? Because no one is cheering for the Vikings anymore? Then make this! Thick and spicy with pork and chiles. Serve with beer and it won't matter who wins. (Spoken like a girl who watches very little football these days...hey.)

Recipe for Game-Day Pork & Black Bean Chili at Food & Wine Magazine/Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures.

C-H-I
L-L-Y
I ain't got no coat
that's why I'm chilly,
I'm chilly,
BRRRRR!

It's not even cold outside - in fact, we're in the midst of a January thaw - but I had a hankering for hearty (bean-optional!) chili tonight anyhow, and every time I make it I think of the above silly rhyme (a take-off on the "U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi..." chant). My crazy sorority sister Laura Robeson made it up, while on a road-trip visit to the University of Iowa for a Badger-Hawkeye football game. The weekend opened with sunny skies and temps in the mid-80s, then suddenly plunged into the low 50s... In mini-skirts and tank tops, we Gamma Phis were COLD. As we sassed around bar-hopping (of course), chasing boys (of course), and shivering and whining about freezing to death, Laura started chanting the above rhyme. Pretty soon we were all chanting (screaming) it and cracking up and miraculously feeling much warmer. Try it some time when you're freezing, it really works!

Or, just have a bowl of chili. Perhaps not as fun as bar-hopping, chasing boys, chanting, or cracking up...but still, gooood stuff.