For a guy, I'm a decent cook I'd say. Not fabulous or anything at all, but decent. I enjoy cooking actually, especially when I'm working off a recipe. Maybe it's the puzzle lover in me, or how I could sit for hours putting Lego sets together by following instructions. But I view cooking in a similar light. You've got all these pieces and some instructions and you have to somehow mix it all up and create a masterpiece. Or at least something edible.

In college, one thing I learned how to cook from a roommate of mine was chili. He was a vegetarian and (don't even ask, please) hung out with a bunch of vegetarian/vegan Dungeons & Dragons players. They were also musicians in a college band called The Acoustically Bent. Anyways, long story short, as insane as they were, they made some amazing chili! I was a pseudo vegetarian myself but to this day I still make this recipe because it's that good.  Just chock full of zillions of beans and vegetables, which I normally wouldn't touch with a 100-foot pole, but somehow the combination and very long simmering makes it all mix perfectly.

Anyways, flash forward a few years. I'm working at a magazine publisher full of lots of young people with nothing better to do with their lives. And since we were guys, we bragged a lot. And one-upped each other. And somehow the topic of chili came up. Before I knew it, we were holding the first-ever Chili-off! I believe there were five of us in the competition, with 3 of our co-workers as judges. (One of which may have actually enjoyed chili on a regular basis, but the other 2 probably never even heard of it.) Our only rule was it had to be homemade. So I grabbed my recipe and went to work.

Except...

Except, I blew it. Big time. My recipe calls for beans, but I usually use the dried beans, rather than the canned ones. They just taste much better. But you need to soak them overnight before using them in the recipe. And guess who forgot to soak them? Yeah, me. So I followed the "quick soak" method on the bags, which said you could boil the beans for about 40 minutes or so. Maybe that'd do the trick! Maybe nobody would notice I screwed up the beans, when they're mixed in with all that tomato sauce, chili powder, broccoli, cauliflower, and more. Yeah, my secret was totally safe, right? Wrong. To my despair, every single person who tried it,  actually said it tasted great, "Except the beans were a bit chewy."

So I ended up taking 3rd place with my hard-beans chili. But... thanks to a scandal, I moved up to #2 by the end of the evening! See, my friend Doug ended up winning, which shocked everyone on the planet. Doug could barely cook toast to save himself. And yet, his chili was mouth-wateringly good. His secret? Upon further inspection, it was learned that all he did was open up a can of generic no-frills chili, and added some peanuts to it. Yes, peanuts. In his mind, this was "cooking." So he was disqualified, and I found myself with the second best chili around. I guess I know how those beauty pageant  runners up feel now. And yes, should the champion ever fail to live up to his chili-performing duties, I'm more than prepared to step in and fill his shoes. But this time, I'll be sure to soak the beans.

COUPON TIME:

Looking to whip up your own vat of chili? Or maybe some other non-massively gas-producing food? Well you can check out our cooking coupons to save some money while you're at it. But for this post, I'm gonna offer up coupons for drugstores selling TUMS, Gas-X and breath mints, as well as home improvement stores just in case you need an extra plunger or new toilet...

$20 off online orders over $125 at Ace Hardware
Use this link to activate the coupon. If there's a problem, enter promotional code NOVAFF08 in your cart.
Valid through: November 30, 2008 11:59pm ET

$10 off online orders over $100 at HomeDepot.com
Use promotion code HOLIDAY1 at checkout.
Valid through: November 26, 2008

$5 off online orders over $50 at Target.com
Use this link to activate the promotional code.
Valid though: December 30, 2008

$5 off and Free Shipping with a $30+ order
OR
$10 off and Free Shipping with a $50+ order at Drugstore.com
NEW CUSTOMERS:
Non-prescription orders only. Can be used once per household.
Use this link to activate the offer. Valid through: December 31, 2008