Slow-cooker chili

Holy cow, I've finally done it! The worst food photo ever seen by human eyes!

Hearty, filling and warm, this is the easiest thing to make in the world. All you need is a few ingredients, a slow cooker, 15 minutes to prep the stuff and 6 hours to let it cook by itself. And you will be happy. SO HAPPY.

Ingredients
2 tbsp chili powder (make your own or buy it ready-made. I suspect the ready-made stuff is full of food colouring and stuff, though)
1 large can (about 3 cups) tomato sauce
1 bay leaf
1 can kidney beans, or whatever beans you like. Rinsed and drained
1 onion, diced
1 lb meat. I used ground pork but you can use whatever you like.
salt to taste
hot sauce/peppers
Optional: any diced up veggies.

Let's do it!
Put your slow cooker to medium and throw in the chili powder, tomato sauce, bay leaf and beans. Stir it together.

In a pan, saute the onions in a bit of oil until they're translucent. Transfer to the slow cooker.

In the same pan, brown the meat and transfer to the slow cooker (drain it out first if you don't like fat in your food.)

This is a good time to add any other veggies you want to put in there. Chili is a great way to use up leftover veggies or meat provided they don't have a ton of other spices/flavours in them.

Let it cook while you do something else for a few hours. You know, like your job.

Taste, add salt. This recipe isn't very spicy since I made it with my entire family in mind. If you like spicy, you can add some fresh chili peppers when you're putting everything in the slow cooker.

Robert Rodriguez's Puerco Pibil

I saw this video a while back (warning: not safe for work/children) and wanted to make it. It looked simple enough and I had pretty good results, though I think I might tweak the recipe the next time around. Here is the recipe with my tweaks.

Ingredients
5 pounds pork butt, cut into 2 inch cubes
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup vinegar
1 tablespoons salt (original recipe says two)
8 cloves garlic
2 habanero peppers, chopped (seeded as well, if you're a wuss)
juice of 5 lemons
1 tablespoon tequila

Annatto paste, in a coffee grinder finely grind:
5 tbsp annatto seeds
2 tsp cumin
1 tbsp black peppercorns
8 pieces allspice (or 1/2 tsp ground)
1/2 tsp cloves

Banana leaves

Let's do it!
Make the annatto paste and put in a blender with OJ, vinegar, salt, garlic, tequila, and peppers. This is your marinade.

Chop up the pork butt into 2 inch cubes and place in a ziploc bag. If there's a big bone in it, keep it, that's good for flavour. Add the marinade and let it sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Set your oven to 325ºF. Add the lemon juice (keep the seeds out!) to the marinade. Take a nice deep oven-safe dish, preferably one with a lid. Make sure the dish holds a volume at least 20% more than that of the pork right now, as there's going to be a ton of liquid released. Line with some banana leaves, and line it in a way so that you can fold the leaves over the meat when you put the meat in. Pour in the meat, bone and marinade, cover with the banana leaf flaps and put the cover on, or cover tightly with tin foil.

Let it cook in the oven for at least 4 hours, according to the recipe. Something may be wrong with my oven, because it took more like 9 hours to cook. The dish is ready when the meat is nice and soft.

That's it! Serve over rice!