(No pictures because #1, I’m lazy, and #2, it looks like chili.)

I originally set out to prepare a chili dip to re-heat quickly for tomorrow. That failed (the cooked dish was way too thin for dip), but what I instead created was, considering the ratio of tastiness to ease of preparation, the tastiest thing I have ever prepared.

  • 1 can 15oz hot chili con carne, no beans
  • 1 can 15oz black beans, drained
  • 1 can 14.5oz diced tomatoes, drained
  • 1 can 4oz diced green chiles
  • 1 can 8.5oz corn kernels, drained
  • 10oz jalapeño queso fresco
  • 1.25oz hot chili powder

Crumble the queso, mix everything together in a 2-quart covered baking dish, and bake at 350° for 30 minutes.

As you can imagine, it’s pretty spicy. You can play around with the non-hot equivalents of the various ingredients as desired. When I was a kid, I really didn’t like spicy foods, but over time that has changed. The likely reason is I’m getting older, and when you get older, you start losing taste buds. When I was in high school, friends and I used to go to Taco Bell often, and they had just introduced the Fire sauce. I would eat it to be “cool”, but really I thought it was too spicy. These days, it’s very mild. When I was in my 20s, I started liking things which were a little hot, but had a lot of flavor (like Frank’s RedHot sauce, which despite the name isn’t that hot). These days, I tend to like heat for heat’s sake.