Whatchagot Chili

Posted on April 28, 2021 by TJ

Monday I made Chili for lunch. Whenever I make Chili, we always have more than we can eat so I always have a lot of leftover chili for the next day’s meal. Sometimes I have too little leftover for both of us, so I add more ingredients to stretch it. By adding a few more ingredients the next day and a few more ingredients the day after that, I can make a pot of chili last for several days–until finally there’s none left to save. The Chili ends up transmorphing from day-to-day into other dishes. For example, Monday I made my basic Chili. Tuesday EJ and I made Whatchagot (“what-you-got”) Chili, which means that we took out all the leftovers accumulated from several meals from the fridge and added them in. We added refried beans leftover from tacos, a fried hamburger-carrot mixure leftover from “Ohm Rice” (a dish my Korean sister-in-law taught us to make years ago), and leftover rice. Today we used the leftover Whatchagot Chili as a topping over spaghetti. When we turn chili into spaghetti sauce, I call the meal “Chil-ghetti.”

This is a good time to tell you that EJ is a wizard at turning leftovers into amazing meals. His most epic Whatchagot Stew was years ago when he combined leftover chicken stir-fry and leftover Italian sausage spaghetti in a pot. He threw in a half eaten Burger King Whopper, one piece of strawberry shortcake, and half a piece of mincemeat pie. It sounds absolutely awful but it tasted incredible. We gobbled it down and wanted more. The thing about Whatchagot Stew is that it’s made entirely of “what you got” in the fridge at the moment so it can’t be duplicated. Since that meal, I’ve suspected EJ of using culinary magic, and when he begins to combine leftovers, I stand out of his way.

Last night EJ was cleaning out his CNC machine at work when a piece of metal chip sliced open his left thumb. He went to the local hospital and they put in ten stitches. He returned to work after they were done patching him together but his thumb was throbbing so much that he ended up coming home early. He was told at the hospital not to use his thumb, to keep his bandage clean and dry, and to return in about ten days to have the stitches removed. Despite these restrictions, he is returning to work today. He talked to his boss and it sounds as if they are going to give him easy jobs that he can do one-handed.

Yesterday evening when EJ had settled in his chair, he asked what new things I had learned about the UK. The interesting thing about learning about a culture from a TV series is that you can pick up pieces of information that you wouldn’t learn from a documentary about the country. Yesterday I learned about various honors awarded in the UK to recognize achievements and service. I learned what a “bedsit” and an “HMO” are, and how they are different. I learned what an “identikit” is, as in “we were indentikit sisters.” I also learned what a “karzy” is. I thought a “karzy” would be a parking garage, but I learned that it is actually “a lavatory, toilet.” In looking up “karzy,” I found an interesting UK slang dictionary, which I added to my “Everything Links” page at the top of my blog. I look forward to exploring it.

My favorite phrase that a character used in an episode is “softly, softly, catchee monkey.” An online dictionary said it means “A slow and careful way of resolving an issue, typically when dealing with a deceptive or otherwise challenging person or thing.” Example: “Don’t you worry, we’ll lull that crook into a false sense of security and then trap him–softly, softly, catchee monkey.”

I think it’s interesting the USA, the UK, and Australia share a common language, but they have developed in different ways. Our languages are so similar that we can understand each other, yet some of our words are so different that in many ways it’s as if we are speaking different languages.