Yipee-yi-O-kie-yay!

My Darling Wife and I often call ourselves “Pioneers.”

It’s almost true. No, we didn’t arrive on the Mayflower or strike out across North America in a prairie schooner. But we are among the first people to resettle this part of the city--a part of town where the closest restaurant is a pizza wagon parked in the driveway of a still-shuttered gas station, and where there are still more people living in FEMA travel trailers than in their houses.

This “pioneer” spirit teamed up with a run of cold weather recently to inspire me to cook a pot of “Sons of the Pioneers” chili.

It was a frigid, windy night last week when I decided to play frontiersman. I had to improvise some of it. I don’t own a hat or saddle, and I substituted a propane stove for an open campfire, and two domestic cats for horses.

But that’s not what it’s all about. Our here, it’s the grub that counts! So I started with Carroll Shelby’s Chili Kit, a can of diced tomatoes and two pounds of lean ground beef.



I can’t exactly say I made a big pot of chili because we don’t really have any “big pots” in the trailer, but I pulled out the biggest I could find and I started browning the meat over the open flame.



I added the spices and flour paste as directed on the package. Because of our hypersensitive smoke alarms, I had the hood fan blowing the whole time. Still, somehow the trailer managed to fill up with that beefy, spicy chili aroma.

To really get into the mood, I put on a “Sons of the Pioneers” cd while I cooked and ate.



I'm an old cowhand from the Rio Grande
And I sing the songs in the cowboy band
I know all the songs that the cowboys know
About the big corral where the doggies go
'Cuz I learned 'em all on the radio
Yipee-yi-O-kie-yay! Yipee-yi-O-kie-yay!

Okay, so it’s not real cowboy music. The Sons of the Pioneers, whose most famous member was Roy Rogers, are actually Hollywood cowboys. But that’s okay, because I’m not a real pioneer either. Besides, that’s not what counts here. In New Orleans, it’s always about the food.

And lemme tell ya--it was good vittles!