It’s been a bit chilly out there the last couple days – at least, by my standards – and Keith requested I make chili for dinner.
Usually, dinner comes together without incident, meal tastes fine, and there’s no surprise finds within the dish. Chili, it seems, would serve to be an exception. My chili consists of a mix of ground beef and ground turkey, black beans, cannellini beans, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, onions, garlic and a handful of herbs and spices.
That night, I decided to clean out the fridge a bit and added chopped red bell pepper and the last of the baby portabella (cremini) mushrooms.
I mixed everything together in a pot and let it simmer for a bit before dishing it up – and dinner that night was uneventful.
The next night, however, was another story…
Keith and I both had separate assignments and were pretty much left to fend for ourselves – of course, we both had some leftover chili.
I was very nearly done with my bowl of chili when I crunched down on something hard. Fearing it was a tiny piece of bone from the ground meat, I extracted the offending object.
A small piece of metal!
It looked like the tip of a sharpened pencil – but was definitely a solid hunk of metal.
It didn’t look like it came off one of the can lids – but I haven’t the faintest idea how it came to be in the pot of chili! I didn’t use a food processor, blender or other such device. The only knife-work I performed was slicing the mushrooms and peppers – and there’s no evidence that a knife was damaged.
There’s no chunk missing from the pot – and I used plastic utensils, not metal, to stir the pot.
So, I ask you, where did the shrapnel come from?
Have you ever cooked or been served a dish and found something that wasn’t supposed to be there? Aside from the occasional piece of cat fuzz, I can’t recall this ever happening to me before.
It’ll definitely make me more aware of what I’m eating – at least until the chili’s gone.
Happy Eats!Deb
