White Chicken Chili With An Awkwardly Large Tortilla Chip

A year ago today, we lived in a studio apartment in the middle of downtown Portland. It was awesome save for the fact that we paid the equivalent of two mortgages to live there, and we eventually ended up renting an amazing house owned by a good friend, for more space and less money. This house is great, and/but it has an offensively huge yard – a yard that obligates you to do garden-y things to it. After several weekends of tilling, weeding, mowing, etc, I planted a cubic shit-ton of seeds and starters and kicked my feet up in smug satisfaction, awaiting a bountiful crop from which I would jar and pickle and fuck some shit up with salads. Unfortunately, there is little difference between Weeds and Not Weeds – so I was hesitant to pull the bad stuff out of the ground, lest it be a beautiful head of Vivian lettuce. The result was a quite spectacular weed garden, with edible vegetables sprinkled throughout.


After some solid foot-dragging, I finally agreed that we should cut our losses, and weed out everywhere there wasn't a successful plant growing. We had about a dozen tomato plants, a dozen cucumber plants, onions, cabbage, spinach and kale, which were all doing well. My mother-in-law came over with a witchcraft weeding tool that changed my life forever, and we tore shit up. Did I mention we also moved our six chickens into their outdoor coop for the first time? So we're now responsible for the lives of both salad ingredients and feathered dinosaurs.


After an entire day gardening, my hands were ripped to shit and I had tons of cuts that were full of dirt and I would have gone for a manicure if it were not for my phobia of the judgment of nail technicians (I have a delicate soul). So I went back out to the garden, where I found entire bushels worth of cilantro, which I've never planted before so apparently came to my yard via osmosis. That's it, kids! I'm making white chicken chili.


2 poblanos, 4 Anaheims, 2 jalepenos, some onion and garlic under the broiler got the kitchen smelling delicious. I went out to my Weed Garden and pulled up a ton of cilantro while my peppers charred and made our house smell like a tacqueria. After the peppers charred, I placed them in a bowl of chicken broth to rest, after which I would peel and seed them in the broth, because I am not a smart woman and have little care for my personal well-being.


Peeling and seeding PEPPERS in a bowl full of PEPPER JUICE with hands that are splintered from two days of yard work is arguably the dumbest fucking thing you could ever do. Have you ever felt your heartbeat, through a cut on your ring finger, for two hours? Because I have, and that shit sucks. But I soldiered through and tossed some chicken breasts in my pepper puree to simmer, along with a quart of chicken broth, cumin, and ground coriander.


At this point, my husband is starving to death because I measure cooking times in intervals of “pretty soon” and “almost done”, both of which roughly translate to “watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then I'll feed you”. After applying ointment to my horrifically demolished hands, it finally all came together. A half pound of Jack cheese never hurt anyone, so into the pot it went – along with a tablespoon of jalepeno pickling liquid. A couple cups of the beans went into the blender, then added back in, to cream it up without adding cream. It was delicious, not to toot my own horn. But beep-beep. After topping with some fresh cilantro and a freshly fried tortilla chip, I inhaled it.


Hopefully my new garden grows, and my chickens lay me boatloads of eggs. In the meantime, despite all of my missteps and fuck ups, I ate a delicious bowl of white chicken chili tonight. I'll give it a thumbs up when my hand stops throbbing from pepper poisoning.


Cheers y'all!