Mom's Chile
I remember my first turn at cooking dinner all by myself at about age 13. The only cooking I'd done before that was attempting caramel to make popcorn balls or failed fudge that Ethel and I attempted more than once.
So there I stood in the kitchen following mom's  directions coming from the living room. I asked" isn't there a recipe?" She said I didn't need one.
The first frustration was peeling the onion and .......... I hated onions. My eyes were burning even more than my hidden temper tantrum. Finally the onion was in the frying pan along with the hamburger.
Then I Ask "what do I do now mom?" She tells me to add a teaspoon of this and that. So I find the salt & pepper and cannot find the measuring spoons. When I ask where they are she says "just pour about a teaspoon in your hand". Ya right, I wanted to say, but we certainly didn't talk back without consequences!
I am getting more upset that she thinks I'm like a Julia Child who knows these things. I'm almost crying and walk over to her chair and she indicates a circle in the middle of her palm. All the while I'm thinking my hands are bigger than hers and this I is going to be a disaster.
Eventually I added the canned tomatoes and beans and the meat all into our huge heavy pot, the one used for so many meals, the pan with the wooden handles long ago broken or burnt off, the pan she had before me and still had up until 2006 or so.
The chili contained 6-7 cans of kidney beans, ya, and one or two large cans of tomatoes. So many beans but we had mom and 5 kids still at home and Mike and Pat could really put some grub away.
We ate every bit of that chili which wasn't half bad along with half a box of crackers. I was so relieved when that cooking lesson was over and I vowed never to get stuck cutting onions again. Now that it's way in the past I'm glad to have the memory.
Thanks mom
Sally