We make chili year round in Texas. It's what sustains us. 110 degrees in the dead of summer? Time to make chili. Leaves a falling in East Austin? Time to make chili. There is simply no food that nourishes the soul and feeds the spirit like a kettle of chili.

We make all kinds: Texas Red, Kentucky White, Mexican brown...you name it. If it involves chile peppers and few hours on the stovetop we'll tackle it and wrestle it around til it turns into food.

It's alchemy. Texas style.

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I was raised on chili. My mom regularly made a batch using red kidneys and ground beef. My grandma had an oddly wonderful take that featured white beans and green tomatoes. My aunts and uncles all knocked out kettles of the stuff and my dad? He made a version at the house for the wife and kids, but he saved the evil for his buddies at the volunteer fire department where he concocted a fierce, witches brew that would singe the brass stays off your Wranglers.

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We eat a lot of alligator.

The state of Louisiana is our source and with a gator population north of 1.5 million there's plenty to be had in the meat markets that dot the western prairies of the Pelican State. Louisiana has had a controlled wild harvest in place since 1972.

Back when the harvest got started, it was limited to the southwestern part of the state and only twelve hundred creatures were taken. Nowadays the hunt is statewide and skilled woodsmen take over thirty two thousand of the ornery beasts per annum. Pole hunting is prohibited and the majority of the animals are taken via the time-honored line catching technique.

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I had no intention of posting this recipe but it came out so good it would be a crime to not share it.

Confession.

I'm a Hatch Chile pepper hoarder. Every August, when the Hatch Chiles come in season, I eat them every single day til near the end of availability. Then, right when they're about to vanish, I buy fifteen to twenty pounds and roast them to store in the freezer.

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With night time temperatures dipping down into the 50's it's looking like the brutal Austin winter is now upon us. Which means it's time to make a kettle of chili.

We actually make it year round as it is one of our favorite foods of all time.

With an extensive repertoire of chilis in our arsenal we often have to take the sofa for a spin while we meditate on which chili needs to be implemented on which particular day.

Today, as we put pad to pen, we have a big kettle of pinto beans simmering on the stove top and they are aromatizing the house to good effect. Yesterday at Fiesta Mart we gathered up some chile seca [arbol and guajillo] a pork shoulder, some giant green onions, a big can of ripe plum tomatoes and some pig feet for stock. Yesterday we smoked our shoulder and pig feet and let the stock simmer all night long. Woke up starving as the house was perfumed with the smell of smoky pig meat.

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Fideo has a thousand mothers, each claiming primacy. One mujere insists that tomatoes are the most crucial ingredient while another claims that the inclusion of them makes the soup "not fideo" but indeed, the dish must include tomatillas to be considered part of the canon..

We're late comers to the sopa de fideo tradition. It wasn't until the late 90's when a torrid affair found us in Brownsville Texas and at the table of a bona fide culinary genius that we were indoctrinated into the tradition.

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The Don Juan is on precarious ground. The once stately taco has been reduced to a wreck of recklessly scrambled eggs with unseasoned boiled potatoes and low grade bacon. To make matters worse it's all served on factory tortillas.

Below, we've re-written their recipe and provided the formula for you to create this dish at your house as the one that's currently being served is not tenable.

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Over in East Texas my friend Amanda's daddy is having trouble with a sounder of wild boar hogs on his farm.

It's nothing a Winchester 30.30 can't fix.

Which is how we came to have a pig brought into Austin for our latest effort on the big brick pit.

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Austin Texas is rife with restaurants serving huevos rancheros.

Our former favorite; La Mexicana, the 24 hour taqueria and panaderia on South First Street's downhill slide has been so steady and frightening that we've had to branch out around town.

We still daydream about their $3.25 rendition from a few years back. Extra cheese, extra bacon? No charge.

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During the research period for my piece on Charles Elmer Doolin, the man who brought the Frito into popular culture, I developed a powerful craving for a Frito Pie.

I can't think of a single restaurant in Austin where you can walk in and order one so I began crafting a recipe that would be worthy of the sobriquet "Ultimate Frito Pie Recipe."

The very concept of Frito Pie has a thousand mothers, each claiming primacy.

For every acolyte of Daisy Dean Doolin and her San Antonio creation someone else will firmly maintain the true mother of the pie to be Teresa Hernandez of Woolworth's in Santa Fe New Mexico.

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A friend of mine likes to play a game when we're all sitting around drinking and playing records called "What's your million dollar idea?"

On one particularly festive evening someone postulated that they'd like to open a Mexican restaurant that had side dishes that weren't rice and beans.

We volleyed that one around for awhile with folks talking about how good enchiladas would go with green beans, fried corn, mashed potatoes and myriad other non-Mexican options.

I'm always writing recipes so I really took this evening to heart once I got home and sobered up a bit.

Here's my recipe for Mexican Mashed Potatoes

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