Naughty By Nature Chili

He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

You want to make Chili with legs? Then, look less gross making it in your oversized red and black checkered flannel shirt and trim your poor man’s ZZ Top beard. You’re a hot sauce sales rep from Long Island, not an oil rig owner’s slacker son from Odessa, Texas.

Being naughty adds zest to our days and has no age. For example, for lunch today I offered my son a mini-Diet Coke if he promised to not pound it in one sip and put it away back in the fridge to sneak in other sips once night falls the way he normally does. Although this time, my 7-Year-Old son says, “It’s not any fun that way. I’d rather sneak in the sips behind your back as usual.”  Understand, my son isn’t a problem child, who’s way sweeter than naughtier by nature compared to his old man. Granted, he’s only 7 and his Internet search history searching for Harry Potter Lego building videos on his Amazon Fire doesn’t make him Kid Rock calling 1^st dibs on the barebacking train with Gianna Michaels at the AVN awards after party in Vegas, without bothering to pull out to leave those jizz freeing beauties a pearl necklace in redneck paradise.

But how do we get kids into chili who associate spicy food with drawn out, unsolicited agony on par with commercials ruining their cloud free TV?  First, make your chili out of love, imbibed with generous heaping’s of layered spiced flavor like any Kid Rock album where he sings, “I’m going to New Orleans, someone is going to treat me right and going to have a crawfish pie to start my day.” You never had crawfish before? Imagine shrimp with personality.  Chili devoid of spice is hot Gazpacho soup with depressingly dreary beans. Still, you can’t make spicy Chili for your kids, without raising their tolerance for spice or risk 1^s,t, or they’ll be less likely to trust your urgings to take a walk on the wild side again, like the time you pushed your 3 kids to power through the watering hole in Woodstock with an unexpected, far from chill current on your tail or the time you encouraged your son to jump off the swing to freak out the local moms at Roselle Park in Pleasantville, NY after singing at the top of your lungs, “I’m going to take you higher.” Only for your son to take a mini tumble, skinning his knee a tad yet still finding the fortitude to bounce right back up before Dad asks him, “When you fall off the horse, what do you do?” And your son says, “Call Child Services.”

Being naughty sometimes means doing things in secret, because without any element of surprise, there ‘s no arousing, joyous lift, that makes the moment stick out from the same old situation. To achieve my goal of raising adventurous, risk taking kids who don’t flinch at the sight of a Jalapeno popper on Superbowl Sunday, I’ve been sneaking in doses of heat throughout all their meals for years like a Stay-At-Home Shaman Comedian. Since all my kids ate more than just Strawberries and boobie milk, which tastes like a regrettable, non-fate latte, I’d slip in red chili pepper flakes into my homemade penne vodka, knowing it would open them to a world of more tongue tantalizing, mind blowing, life enriching possibilities, by helping foster a sense of semi risking taking adventurism, versus me catering to their every request, so they’d become another entitled, enabled, fussy eater toddler twat like the rest.

You have to take baby steps, similar to me starting with Budweiser in high school, pale ale’s after college and double IPA’s in my forties for more fully loaded, concentrated blasts of a happiness in a glass. Now, every time I drink a pale ale again, I regret the decision immediately, because my taste buds have graduated to greener, more sumptuous pastures ever since. I have to bite my lip enough around a name calling, door slamming, f bomb hurling, always right wife, who threatens to kick me out of the house away from my 3 biggest fans in the universe, if I plan on following through with writing another book again. So, at this stage of my life, I’ve lost all desire to circumcise my happiness, which is denying myself the pleasure for the sake of trying to live out a calmer, less bombastic version of myself, because my opinions and passion for comedy gold generation are too aggressively edgy cheery for their tastes.

Now being naughty isn’t exclusive to cheating or being a sketchy, secretive fuck either. For example, one time, I won my son a big inflatable bat at Rock and Jump and as we left the building, my 4-year-old son thrusts the inflatable bat between his legs and says, “Daddy, check out my new penis. It’s bigger than Big John Stud.”  

Naughty is spicing things up, which can be as simple as using the Shishito peppers I discovered at the last minute in the freezer , which my wife’s friend gave us to throw into the chili as an inspired, improvised, las minute thrown in, after I realized the regular Jalapeno peppers didn’t pack enough collective oomph to turn my kids on to the expansive, soul penetrating powers of good heat circulated Chili, enough to raise their eyebrows and blow their minds with explosive edge like when I actually explained what OPP means, before writing this piece. I explained both versions if you’re wondering.

I used Kosher turkey meat for my Naughty By Nature Chili and threw in continuous sprinklings of mortar pulverized black ground pepper because added spice adds more uplifting rocking edge to our days. Also, make sure you don’t plop in the red kidney beans until the last 15 minutes or else they’ll become deflated shells of themselves like Rebel Wilson’s tits.

Eating chili doesn’t have to remind you of your perpetually broke twenties or early forties now, if it’s made with spicy, spontaneous, over the top love, which increases your tolerance for risk and adventure like Christopher Columbus after his 1^st VD shot.

Michael Kornbluth