Christmas break seems like eons ago. I was in Mexico City for part of the holiday, where it was a balmy 70 degrees. Perfection! I came home and was swamped with edits for the latest cookbook. Then there was the polar vortex. And the latest cold snap. Ugh. Weather, and January.

When it gets brutal outside, your style of cooking changes, doesn’t it? You braise and stew, make pots of soup, bowls of chili, hearty dishes that warm you from the inside out. Well here is another recipe that will keep your stove on…


Awhile back I was sent The Lemonade Cookbook. With new takes on classic, comfort food-style recipes, it had a recipe for chicken chili, just the sort of recipe to have on a cold winter’s night. There were very few surprises in the list of ingredients– which was exactly what I wanted– something that was warm, sustaining, reliable, and delicious. But by using ground chicken rather than ground beef, the chili is lighter than most, allowing the spices to shine through.

The original recipe is for one big ol’ pot of chili. Too much for me and my leftover-eating apathy. So the recipe I’m giving is for just about half a recipe. (Don’t worry you’ll still have leftovers!) I used only 1 pound of ground chicken (the original recipe called for 3 pounds), but the chili was still meaty. Simmering on the stove this chili smelled great, and tasted even better.

Stay warm!

I’m back from a weekend away with my work-mates that I mentioned in this post (where I also mention lots of chocolate so do head back there!) and we are now smack in the middle of a new week.  Catching up with everything left behind does that I suppose.  But I am invigorated, or should I say re-invigorated, and ready to seriously boogie…whether it is at work or at play!

Our company has had a team building every year, as most companies do, but this year I wanted something a bit different.  Work is certainly never a walk in the park (maybe for some lucky people but not for most) and even in the most dreamy of jobs there are moments of stress, deadlines to be met, goals to be achieved, overtime hours to be clocked in. Let’s be honest, most of us are in, what we might consider to be, “regular jobs”…not the dream jobs of our fantasies (traveling food taster/pig farmer/professional napper needed? anyone?).  But I thought, how do we inject motivation into work?  How to we inspire vigor and enthusiasm in the workplace?  How to we create exuberance on the job?

I realized…the answer is we don’t.

We create it in life…and then it will spill over everywhere.

It starts with the individual, on a personal level.  Not really with the “team”, on the “work” level.

That is what I wanted to find for these intrepid, valiant folk with whom I work.  Yes, I certainly wanted a lot of bonding and actual “team building” but I also wanted it to be something more, something that involved getting people to think about themselves (their unique selves!) on a personal level, about purpose and strengths and living life and about where their joy comes from. 

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