The fire down below

[Ed W]

She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed decided we would have chili tonight.  Now, I love chili, but I can't have beef.  The proteins clog up my joints and the resulting intense pain is highly effective at changing my behavior.  So She didn't put beef in my chili.

She used chorrizo, instead.

"Taste this and see if it needs more spices," she said.  The chili bubbled at the bottom of a pot, looking exactly like molten lava only hotter. 

If you're unfamiliar with chorrizo, it's a Mexican sausage made with beef or pork, scads of pepper, radioactive byproducts, and even more pepper.  This is like Italian sausage on steroids as envisaged by masked, cackling maniacs from the Spanish Inquisition.

And I love it.

I took a spoon and tasted the chili.  My tongue blistered and my nose hairs burned off.  It was perfect!

Life is good.

[guido911]

[sgrizzle]

I do 3lbs of beef and 2lbs of Chorizo when I make it. Chorizo can overpower the other seasonings pretty easy.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Sounds gout-ish, Ed.  I read recently (can't remember where - probably an NPR or PBS thing) that there is a decent study that involved 40,000 + men who took 500 mg Vitamin C and had conclusive improvement.  Positive relative to placebos.

[nathanm]

Spanish chorizo has more flavor, but is basically impossible to find around here. We have to haul it back with us from south Florida. Of course, if you're the sort who thinks "spicy" means "tastes like hellfire itself," you might disagree with my assessment of the relative flavors.

I believe that rather than loads of cayenne and similar spicy peppers, they use loads of paprika and similar not-so-spicy peppers.

[Hoss]

Where's the best place to get decent chorizo anyway?  I've been to the Warehouse out at 11th/Garnett (closest to me) and they have it in tubes.  I bought some and was going to make a chili con chorizo dip with it but while I like spicy, this stuff was insanely salty.  I'm not a big fan of salt to the point of it overpowering everything else and this did.  Needless to say I didn't each much of it.

[Conan71]

There's one type which is more of a link I get at Reasor's occasionally, it works good in breakfast frittatas for texture and flavor.  I accidentally got another type which became more of a mush but it really imparted good flavor to what we put it in.

FMC is a little more fat conscious than I am so she uses ground turkey in her chili along with a good selection of spices.  I can't tell it's not beef.  Her real specialty though is a New Mexico inspired green chile stew that is out of this world.  She uses a barbacoa style pork shoulder for that.

If you have not tried Lovera's Italian sausage for your Italian fare, I recommend it highly.  I like to heat the spiral up on a bed of fresh garlic in a cast iron skillet before putting it in whatever I'm cooking.  Only problem is, I discovered it's got some preservatives in it I try and avoid.  Anyone know if Siegi's makes an Italian sausage without preservatives?

[Ed W]

Sounds gout-ish, Ed.  I read recently (can't remember where - probably an NPR or PBS thing) that there is a decent study that involved 40,000 + men who took 500 mg Vitamin C and had conclusive improvement.  Positive relative to placebos.

You nailed it.  I was diagnosed with pseudo-gout about 15 years ago.  The symptoms are the same - painful joints like arthritis - but the etiology is different.  True gout is an indication that the kidneys can't process uric acid.  The body packs it into the joints where it crystallizes.  It's like throwing sand in a bearing.  Pseudo gout happens further up the digestive process.  My body can't break down purines to uric acid, so it does the same thing.  The proteins that cause it are found in beef, beer, red wine, and cheese, especially yellow cheeses.

I sometimes dream about beer.

If I can get back into a regular exercise program, my body requires more protein, and the problem is nearly eliminated.  But I haven't been able to exercise since I mangled my left knee lifting a commercial air conditioner last summer.  It was stable again, and the pain was gone when I twisted it while walking on the ice back in February.  I've been walking with a cane again since that happened.  I'm hoping to be back on my bike in a couple of weeks.

I've been eating a LOT of chicken, with pork and fish for variety.  A few weeks ago, I had a vegetarian pizza with just a sprinkling of cheese from Papa Murphys.  I love Italian and Mexican food, but it's hard to find something on a restaurant menu that doesn't include beef or cheese.  And that stuff is incomplete without a beer.

Mary put the leftover chili in my lunch today, but I forgot to take an acid blocker along.  I've been suffering since lunch, but it was a fine lunch!

(burp)

[heironymouspasparagus]

I bet the vitamin C stuff still applies.

Further up?  I thought gout/uric acid came in around the gall bladder ducts?  I guess I was wrong (??)

Nephew suffers a lot, so don't envy you one little bit.  Got my bad back for my cross, so guess if it ain't one thing, it's just another.  Still wouldn't trade you.