Step 1. Brown some ground beef and put in all your secret spices that everyone else also uses to make chili, then remember you don’t have tomatoes and it’s too cold to go to the store.
Step 2. Sit down and pout even though you know it’s your fault for not finding all the ingredients before starting.
3. Put the beef in a plastic container and swear you’re going to add tomatoes and beans tomorrow.
4. Continue to be hungry for chili, because of course you took a taste and now it’s got you in its grip.
5. Decide you’re smarter than people who can’t have fun without tomatoes.
6. Put the greasy pan back on the fire.
7. Throw in some shredded mozzarella because the cheddar is in the freezer. Jesus now has the wheel.
8. Search the fridge for divine inspiration. Wasabi? No. Pickles? No. Leftover Tacos 4 Life sauce from a faded rice bowl in the rearview mirror of your heart? YES!
9. The mozz is changing shape so scoop a sloppy joe’s worth of beef over it and use a spatula to push out rows in the beef like you’re about to plant seeds for next year’s soybean harvest.
10. Shake that tiny T4L sauce cup like the spray paint can dedicated to your next misdemeanor then only splash a little on the beef because that stuff is gold and you’re lonely but not desperate.
11. Pinky-groom your eyebrows and think about the time you and your friends made up that dance to Leif Garrett’s “I Was Made for Dancin” and blame your lack of fame and fortune on the one kid who wanted to be a team player but only liked country music.
12. Barrel a rolling pin across two slices of wheat bread that came from a bag with a Disney character on it because you also don’t have tortillas in the house, you absolute Yugo of a human.
13. That mozz is brown and cronchy by now but the spatula isn’t your friend for a cheese flip. Unless you like so many folds in your sammich it books an Oktoberfest gig and starts stretching out to play The Chicken Dance. Just pick up the pan and pour everything on your now-flat bread. Smash the lid on top (for y’all playing at home, that’s the other piece of bread).
14. Get out the pizza cutter so you will have dirtied at least 10 dishes at this point. That’s how you know you’re a genius chef.
15. Eat the first triangle and bend your knees while yelling “GOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL!” You know why.
16. Stack the other 3 triangles and charge them $50 for a photographic sitting fee.
17. Eat the 2nd triangle while you edit the photo.
18. Eat the last 2 while you post nonsense to Facebook.
19. Wonder how it’s possible you’re single.
20. Nap in the recliner.
shellicooks 