third world county

Another “not-a-recipe” recipe from the kitchen of third world county central. You can easily modify this to be a made-from-scratch recipe.

Crunch time: needed a quick meal that didn’t seem like a quick meal… Had to use stuff on hand…

2-4 cooked boneless chicken breasts (I had three on hand), cubed.
one 24-oz can of hominy, including the liquids
one 20-oz can of pinto beans (yeh, I know cooking my own is better–and I prefer it, but not when it’s crunch time and I need a meal fast)
one 6-oz can tomato paste (it’s what I had–a can or two of chopped tomatoes would probably have been better)
one handful (yes, that’s a measured amount ) chili powder
one handful FRESHLY-GROUND cumin (only took a few seconds in an electric coffee grinder)

Pop all that (and any water you might want to add to please your eye) in a medium pot and bring it to boil, back off to simmer for a bit, and in much less than 30 minutes, a filling meal.

First night: a hominy soup. Next night, it’s stew.

Heck, some corn chips or cornbread (30 minutes is enough to make some cornmeal muffins) and it’s a filling meal. I added some sliced jalapeños to mine and Wonder Woman ate hers as it came out of the pot.

Unrelated sidebar: I’ve not gotten around to buying raw beans and roasting my own coffee, yet, but I have stumbled across a way to “freshen” already roasted coffee beans a tad. I juat pop ‘em in the microwave (along with a small glass of water, a separate container) for one or two 30-second bursts. It seems to bring out the oils a tad so whenI grind ‘em in my hand-cranked burr grinder, the coffee at least seems to have a fuller aroma and the taste of the brewed joe is a little richer, it seems to me.