Now here’s a conundrum to ponder for this week. When is the official national chili day? Now before you start sending angry e-mails, let me be clear. I know that October is National Chili Month. I’m not sure where this tradition started, but I’m wondering if it doesn’t have some association with firefighters. After all, some of the best chili recipes around came from firehouses. Every year you hear of more and more Firehouse Cook-offs that are competing over the best Firehouse Chili between fire stations. Chili cook-offs are popular fund-raising events for volunteer fire departments.

But, according to the Hallmark Ultimate Holiday site, today, February 25, 2013 is National Chili Day. It seems like a reasonable day to dig into a bowl of chili. The weather isn’t going to be very dramatic in our part of the world, but the folks in the Kansas City area are slated for their second record-setting blizzard in a week. If you could avoid traveling in that area, sitting down with a good bowl of chili might be just the right thing for a blizzard day.

But it just isn’t that simple. You might think that nationalchiliday.com, the official National Chili Day web site, might have the real scoop on the actual day of celebration. According to that site, National Chili Day is the 4th Thursday of February, which would be the 28th this year.

The Butcher’s Blog lists February 23 as National Chili Day.

Answers.com reports February 24 as National Chili Day.

The Goodecompany blog has National Chili Day as September 5, but they are so far out of sync with the rest of the world, that I’m discounting their authority when it comes to the official day for chili.

The solution, I guess, would be to make a really big pot of chili today and have leftovers for the rest of the week. That would have been easier had I remembered to put the beans out to soak overnight, but I didn’t do that. It still isn’t too late for a good bowl for supper thanks to the power of the crock-pot.

Around here, the most common chili features ground beef or buffalo with onions, garlic, tomato sauce and red kidney beans flavored with cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, chili powder and just the right amount of cayenne. It’s pretty easy up up the ante with chunks of stew meat in place of the ground meat. Cooked just right the meat will fall apart and fill the bowl with flavor. We like a healthy dose of shredded cheddar on top.

I’ve also made chili with ground turkey.

And I’ve made some acceptable vegetarian chili as well. Be sure to include some garbanzo beans. Celery and bell peppers add quite a bit as well and in addition to the other spices, put in a bit of basil. I like corn in vegetarian chili, too. It adds color and a nice flavor variation.

But I’m thinking that today might not be a bad day for chili with chunks of diced chicken, which got me to thinking of some really good chicken apple sausage that I had last summer and I wonder if I could find any of that at the store at this time of the year. . . .

Not knowing what day is the official National Chili Day does leave open the possibility of trying more than one recipe, I suppose.

The Ultimate Holiday Site, being sponsored by Hallmark and the Kansas City greeting card’s company’s desire to sell cards every day, usually has more than one holiday for the day and today is no exception. OK, they only listed one holiday for yesterday, National Tortilla Chip Day. I missed that one completely. At any rate they are showing February 25 as National Chocolate Covered Nuts Day as well.

Now that is a holiday that calls for something more serious than a bowl of peanut M&M’s but the M&M’s aren’t a bad way to start the celebration. Some web sites are showing it as National Chocolate Covered Peanuts day, but I’m going with the Hallmark version. I love chocolate covered almonds. Chocolate-covered cashews aren’t bad, either. I can’t remember ever eating a chocolate covered filbert, but I wouldn’t be opposed to trying one. The Oh! Nuts web site has peanuts, cashews, almonds, pecans, Brazil nuts and bridge mix all covered with your choice of dark or milk chocolate. They also sell the caramelized nut clusters covered in dark chocolate. They do caution that they are no longer able to fill orders for Purim, which makes sense since Purim started with sundown on Saturday and ended with sundown on Sunday.

I know the basic story of how Mordechai and his adopted daughter Queen Esther saved the Jews from that evil Haman, vizier to King Ahasuerus. I know that Purim is celebrated with a big meal, gifts of food and drink, charity to the poor, and the public reading of the book of Esther. I hadn’t made a connection between the holiday and chocolate covered nuts before, but I guess if you are running the Oh! Nuts website, every day is a good day to celebrate with chocolate-covered nuts. They do have a point, chocolate seems to be an appropriate food for any celebration.

So I suppose that it isn’t too late to order your chocolate covered rabbit for Easter. That holiday is still four weeks away. And I prefer the chocolate rabbit to those silly marshmallow peeps any day. But then I’m no fan of marshmallows. I used to make S’mores with chocolate and graham crackers and leave out the marshmallows.

A better use of the Peeps would be to enter the Washington Post’s 2013 Peeps Diorama Contest. You make your own diorama featuring the Easter treats, take a photo and submit the photo to the contest. The Post has been sponsoring the contest for several years, now and the photos of previous dioramas are pretty impressive. Whoever made an entire coliseum with a pink peep facing off against lions and the stands full of pastel bunny ears has more spare time than I do. The Royal Wedding for the Peeps was a burst of imagination. Some people really get carried away and make animated videos featuring the confections.

I guess I’ll stick with a pot of chili.

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