Page 4A • Sunday, October 9, 2011
STAFF VIEWS
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The Daily Citizen
The quest for perfect chili
Sometimes, people ask me what I would do if I weren't in the newspaper business. Ask most newspaper people that question, and you'll get relatively predictable answers: public relations official, teacher, consultant — something relating to communications. Not me. If this industry drags me away, kicking and screaming, you won't see me on the 10 p.m. news a month later, speaking on behalf of another organization. There are plenty of good PR people in the world, and I don't think that industry will suffer much without my services. As an editor, I am already provided the opportunity to serve as a teacher and mentor to young journalists, and I offer my consulting services free of charge to anyone who asks. No, if I ever find myself out of the business, I'm doing a complete 180. I'm going to open up a chili shack. Why chili? Well, many reasons. For one, there are few more satisfying dishes in the world. Regardless of one's background or social class, a nice hot bowl of chili will please the palate, ease the mind and soothe the spirit. It has been said that if adversaries would sit down over a bowl of chili, there would be no problems in the world. Are you listening, President Obama? Are you listening, Speaker Boehner? Forget golf. Get together over some piping-hot Texas Red and get busy solving our nation's problems. Secondly, the complexity of making chili and the fact that cook-offs are held frequently appeals to my competitive nature. Up until about three years ago, my cooking skills consisted of taking a TV dinner out of the freezer and heating it up in the microwave. That was until I picked up a men's magazine one day that featured a simple recipe for cooking steak. The recipe couldn't have been any easier to execute: a hot cast-iron skillet, a high-quality slab of room-temperature beef and a liberal dose of salt and pepper. That was it. No marinades, no fancy cooking techniques required. I tried it and was hooked. It seemed unreal that such a simple process could produce such delicious results. From there, I moved on to a few other simple recipes that made up for in taste what they lacked in complexity. After a long workweek, I found cooking to be therapeutic. All my worries and cares would drift away with the smoke that rose from the stove top. Simple recipes were fun for a while, but I started to get bored. I needed a challenge. I needed a recipe that I could tweak and adjust until I found the perfect formula. I needed something you can't find in a cookbook. I needed something that would be uniquely mine, something that I could one day pass down to my children. I decided that chili would provide that challenge. Each year, thousands compete in chili cook-offs, and I figured this would be a good gauge of how I was progressing as a cook. My starting point was Google. I searched numerous chili recipes until I found one that I felt best suited my taste buds. I went by the book the first time, then I adjusted the recipe a bit more each time I remade it — introducing new spices, using more previouslyincluded ingredients and omitting or reducing ingredients I didn't care for.
JACOB BROWER
I finally got the recipe tweaked to what I felt was the point of perfection, and decided to enter it in the annual chili cook-off where I lived in Pittsburg, Kan. With all the work and time I put in, there was no way I was walking away without a trophy. My ego got the best of me, and the fall was hard. My place? Dead last. I couldn't believe the outcome. Perhaps expecting top honors in my first outing was a bit ambitious. But dead last? I'm sorry, but losing just doesn't sit well with me. Nonetheless, I made it a point to taste the chili that placed in the top three before going home to lick my wounds. I detected spices that did not appear in my chili and asked other contestants for some advice and pointers. I went back to the drawing board — adding, eliminating, changing, reducing and increasing ingredients, entering chili cook-offs all the while. I slowly started to move up the rankings, but was still finishing closer to the back of the pack than the front. Every few weeks, I would make a new incarnation of my recipe and get my then-fiancée's advice. I prefer chili that's so spicy that the first bite draws beads of sweat. She's partial to mild chili. I tweaked the recipe until we found a happy medium. Before you know it, a year had passed and it was time for the local cook-off once again. By this point, my chili bore little resemblance to the original recipe. There was one problem with entering, though: My bachelor party was scheduled for the same day. I resigned myself to having to sit this one out. But, later, it occurred to me: Why not do both? The cook-off was in the morning, the bachelor party in the afternoon and evening — why not just make a full day of it? My chili had been entered in cook-offs under many names, and none of the names was particularly notable. Due to the timing of the contest, I decided to dedicate my chili to my soon-to-be wife. The name: "Jacob's Ball & Chain Chili." I showed up to the contest in a prisoner's outfit I rented from a local costume shop. My better half — who is a good sport about such things — even helped with the graphic design element, creating a logo with a picture of me urgently trying to pull away from a "ball" with her annoyed face on it. I told her that if my chili placed well in the contest, the name would stick. Her likeness must have been my good luck charm. I placed second in the competition and earned first place for showmanship. Nearly a year ago, I entered my chili in the Bald Knob cook-off and came away with yet another second-place finish. As I write this column, I'm thinking about entering Saturday's cook-off in Pangburn. Those second-place finishes are OK, but I'm still itching for a win.
STAFF VIEWS
The art of playing politics
F
unny how things work out. The folks in Batesville, including some close personal friends, were angry with me for years because I was chairman of the committee on the State Board of Education that located vo-tech schools. For some reason, they had been assured that a school would go to Batesville. As it has turned out, that school has become a part of Arkansas State University’s Beebe branch. It was valuable and I was instrumental in landing it in Searcy, but Batesville was never higher than third on the list. Brinkley should have been angry with me. The
PERRIN JONES
school came to Searcy because I swapped my vote for two votes that were trying to get the school in Brinkley. I voted for Brinkley and the two for Brinkley voted for Searcy. That’s the way the game called politics is played and some of us are really interested in what can be accomplished by it. In planning the school,
we used up all the appropriated money and realized that there was no money left for parking lots and paved roads to the school. I went to Truman Baker on the Arkansas Highway Commission at the time and explained to him what the problem was and he said he might be able to get the highway department to finance those add-ons. In those days, highway commissioners could do about anything they wanted to do in their district. At the next highway board meeting, Truman didn’t bring up the matter, but after the meeting, he went over to the secretary and asked if she had gotten his “minute order” for the
Searcy school. She looked and found nothing about it. Truman told her he was afraid she had missed it because it came up during a lot of confusion on another project. He then dictated a “minute order” to build a mile of primary highway from McRae Street to Davis Drive curving around the new school. It was even designated with a number which I’ve long since forgotten. The problem was solved. Those who think all politics is for bad purposes and all politicians are in it for themselves are, as always, wrong. Perrin Jones is editor emeritus of The Daily Citizen.
STATE VIEWS
Darr, Griffin matter to Mitt Romney — really
A friendly reader of a mildly acerbic Democratic persuasion sent an email last week chortling sarcastically that Mitt Romney was no doubt ecstatic that Lt. Gov. Mark Darr of Arkansas had endorsed him. Actually, Romney surely is pleased and encouraged, if perhaps not quite beside himself. That goes not only for Darr’s support, but also for the subsequent endorsement that Romney picked up from U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin. Those endorsements are potentially significant. Really. I’m told that Romney actually courted both these men personally after being put in touch with them by former U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, who strongly supports Romney. Allow me to seek to explain why Romney would bother. He is the most credible would-be president in the otherwise laughable Republican field. He has political and business experience, policy command and, his lingering stuffiness notwithstanding, political performance skill. Republicans have tended in modern times to bestow their nomination on the person whose turn it seemed to be. It appears to be Mitt’s turn. He’s a bit too slick, dicing issues to try to finesse that he has been on two or three sides of many of Jacob Brower is the editor of them. And he is burdened The Daily Citizen. He can be in the Republican primary, reached at jbrower@thedailycitizen.com, or (501) 268-8621. especially now in the tea
JOHN BRUMMETT
party age, by a history of moderation. Such a history would be required of any Republican navigating politics in Massachusetts, where Romney was governor. But the new extreme Republicanism has no forbearance. In that requisite moderate incarnation in Massachusetts, Romney spearheaded a drive for state-based health care reform much like the new federal law detested by conservatives. He now says he is especially qualified, by having done such a horrible thing and learning better, to undo the federal law. Romney also is a member of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-Day Saints, and there remains a distrust of that religion among fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. That’s particularly so among Southern Baptists of the conservative Deep South who are essential to the Republican electoral equation.
It is Romney’s very history of moderation that makes him the most credible GOP candidate for the general election. But it’s also that very history of moderation that makes his path to the GOP nomination perilous. The conventional thinking is that it won’t matter who wins the Iowa caucuses because they have been so overtaken by the extreme conservative religious base that even Mike Huckabee won them pointlessly four years ago. Then Romney will win New Hampshire, which is in the Boston media market where he is well-known. Then the action comes South, to South Carolina and beyond. It is Romney’s seeming vulnerability in this pivotal old Confederacy, and that alone, that sustains Texas Gov. Rick Perry. A tea party favorite even as he blunders through debates, Perry offers the only real alternative to Romney. In that context, 20 Arkansas Republican state legislators, organized by reformed columnist David Sanders, sent Perry a letter weeks ago pleading with him to enter the race. So what Romney needs — badly if not quite desperately — is evidence
A tea party favorite even as he blunders through debates, Perry offers the only real alternative to Romney.
of his acceptability in the South to local Republicans of a credibly right-wing bent. It’s hard to get to Darr’s right or to Griffin’s. And now both have said publicly that Romney meets their approval. What Romney further needs is not to be blown away in the South. He will be helped by a greater reliance this year on proportional award of delegates instead of winner-take-all formats. Darr told me in an email that he was initially inclined toward Perry and still likes him, but that he waited to be blown away and, alas, was not. With the objectives being defeat of Barack Obama and economic reinvigoration, Romney becomes the obvious choice, he said. Griffin might also be motivated as a protégé of Karl Rove and a product of the Bush White House. The Bushes don’t like Perry. It’s a class and turf thing, apparently. Meantime, Sanders tells me rumors of Perry’s demise are exaggerated. He cited the Texas governor’s $17 million fund-raising performance and Romney’s bumpy path to the nomination. And he said the Texas governor likely will make a campaign appearance in Arkansas soon. John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
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