Here is what works for me as far as American Chili:

1/2 pound beef Hamburger

Half an onion--red, white, yellow...whatever is cheap.

Now work on the meat. Get a real iron giddle and let it break down.

While it is frying add one half of the onion, properly diced and of course some salt and pepper.

While this is all developing.

My grocery has this cheap huge can of diced tomato for about $1.00. No kidding. Sometimes I have to pay another 50 cents. But what the hell.

Grab the cheapest little can of tomato paste. Sometimes 66 cents.

Take a regular pan and put the diced tomato and paste in the pan and let it simmer.

You can add dry Italian seasoning, a little garlic seasoning, a touch of chili seasoning and a touch of cumin and red pepper seasoning. (I can find these gems for a buck a piece and if you are nuts, pay 3 bucks for each seasoning)

What I have been playing with, even though canned tomatoes and canned tomato paste have a lot of nutrition--no kidding--you can add diced carrots and some brocolli properly cut to the meat mixture.

I hate carrots and brocolli, but if you fry them long enough, they might be palatable.

Now grab your slow cooker and just throw in the tomato sauce you just made along with half of the (huge) onion you have left from the meat mixture.

Put this slow cooker on slow.

Add the meat after it is properly browned.

I usually add the same seasoning I put in the meat to the tomato sauce.

Now you need three 16 ounce cans of kidney beans that have been washed in cold water.

You put those into the slow cooker.

Now you can walk away for three hours.

It is all right.

For further pleasure, go ahead and cook some Italian sausage (without casing as about 2 bucks a pound on a good day). A third of a pound will enhance the flavor of the hamburger meat.

Italian sausage in this context is simply pork sausage with a lot of seasoning, especially when the meat is labeled hot Italian sausage.

The diced carrots boil for three hours in the slow cooker and eat up the many flavors of this dish.

Same with the Broccoli.

Now a critic might demand that cooking some vegetables for a long period of time reduced their nutrition.

But, when you cook carrots, you have actually increased the nutrition value. Because the body cannot extract the beta carotene as well in the context of raw carrots.

All I have done is attempted to add nutrition to what really is a rather nutritional dish!

It really is, per serving as a real dinner dish, rather low on calories and high on nutrition without regard to side dishes. I mean you have chili with some crackers and that is all the meal you are meant to eat.

Like I said I hate carrots unless you have put them thru a juicer. I mean carrot juice is wonderful and I never understood why that is!

I have to add this!

I can get 6 meals easy on this for really really cheap.

$3.50 or less for marked down hamburger and you only use half.

$2.00 for Italian sausage (on sale) and you only use a third.

$1.00 for diced tomatoes.

$.66 for tomato paste

$3.00 (or $2.00 on sale) for three cans of kidney beans.

$1.00 for a big onion.

$.50 for seasoning if you are cheap like me.

$.50 for two carrots

$1.00 for a bunch of broccoli.

For less than $9.00 you have at least 6 or seven or eight meals.

I mean that is pretty good. It is cheaper than six happy meals. It is much more nutritious.

And it is satisfying.

Now add some crackers ($2.00 on sale and you will use half the box for the entire 9 meals) and you can even add some low cal margarine to the crackers that should add about $.25for every meal.

The meal is cheap, high in nutrition, low in fat, and it is satisfying.

So it is 1:00 PM, and you are hungry and you can eat 250 calories with high nutrition and feel satisfied.

AND NOT SO GUILTY