• 1 can chili con carne with beans
• 1/4 cup diced tomato
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 2 cups cooked rice
• cumin
• garlic powder
• onion powder
• 3 tablespoons sour cream

The purpose of this meal is to learn how to make do with little and at the same time learn how to stretch what you do have. I could have very easily used a whole onion or a whole tomato but when you are running low on produce, it can be a good practice to use them in portions so that you have some left over to flavor other foods with in the future.

Every time I cook chili or beans, I always make sure to have some cooked rice with the meal. This technique will stretch one can of chili into four separate meals that aren’t boring even if simple.

The only preparation, really, for this dish was the effort put into presentation. Warm your chili on the stove, at end of cooking time toss in your diced veggies but save about one fourth of the jalapeno for garnishing purposes. Season rice with your cumin and garlic powder, top with chili, then sour cream followed by jalapeno slices. The technique I used for the jalapenos was to cut at an angle in order to provide more surface area to make it look more pretty.

p.s. Canned chili almost never looks pretty or appetizing unless you are quite familiar with it.