I decided the saga of making vats of bison chili was worthy of its own post...

After lunch, I started on prep work. It took 4 1/2 hours to dice all the veggies, open and drain all the cans, defrost and cook all the bison. In fact that latter was the one thing I failed to properly plan. The 25 pounds of bison we have came frozen in 5 pound blocks. How does one defrost a large, 5 pound block of bison in a kitchen that has a tiny microwave and just one frying pan? The oven! I set it low, put the bison on baking pans, and every few minutes would pull one out and scrape off the thawed meat, return that pan to the oven, pull out the other, scrape more, etc. As soon as I had a quantity of thawed bison, that went into the frying pan for browning. About the time it would finish cooking, the next batch of thawed meat was ready. That took a couple hours just to get through 10 pounds. I decided to make do with that much, and we'll use the rest for burgers or something later in the week.

Next came equally dividing all the ingredients between the two large roasting pans (think crock pots on steroids). The roasters don't fit on my counter, so I had them side by side on the floor. Turned the roasters on for a few hours until everything was hot and bubbly, then switched them off during dinner. After heading home I switched the roasters back on for the night. Wish I could share the amazing aromas in my apartment, it's just fabulous!

Pictures, as promised!

The ingredients, ready to be transformed.

The spread of prep work in my kitchen.

Mmm...delectable.

The two vats of chili went into the fridge in the morning.

The bases of the roasters, where I had the chili roasting all night.

Got up a little early and drove out to the bison corrals along Sage Creek Rim Rd with Ranger Natalie to prepare for next week. Maintenance is going to turn on the power to the sheds out there, which is our back-up plan to camping down in Sage Creek next week. If it's very cold, the kids just won't do well with the warmer-weather sleeping bags we have. Here we could turn on the heaters to warm the space and just line everyone up on the concrete slab in their bags.

Came back for lunch, then started on prep work for making bison chili. See next post for the entire saga. For dinner, a few of us went down to the Wagon Wheel. Ed, Dave, and Dudley, who just arrived today from Duluth. He is a photographer/videographer and is here for the week to document the youth camp. Came back to the quad and stopped over to Ryan's house where he, Katie, and John were. Ryan and Katie were in Portland until yesterday, so I hadn't seen them yet. After a little while there, I headed home and switched the roasters back on for the night. Wow does it smell awesome in here!