ART
is
PUNK
is
JOY¹
strong strokes of white paint on the back of the person’s long coat
walking down 1100 East toward Sugarhouse
drizzly dark January afternoon
cold but not as cold as it maybe should be

(4:03:18 PM - Salt Lake City (40.728079, -111.859654))

Standalone post link: ART is PUNK is JOY | Picture Not Taken

I realized that though I’ve been making this chili for years I never have set down my version of this old recipe. So, this afternoon before I cooked I documented everything I was going to do, and now I’m sharing it here.

This is based on a recipe that was all just in my grandma’s head as well. My mom one time attempted to transcribe the recipe from her mom’s oral descriptions and shared it with me and Gin when we got married. I’ve tried a bunch of variations over the years but have ended up back at what is basically the original with the addition of some warm spices with the chili powder.

The ironic thing is that I didn’t really like this all that much when my grandma made it when I was a kid. (I had a thing against beans.) I never even tried to make it until long after my Grandma’s death. I make it frequently now because Gin really likes it, I like it, and Mia likes it. (Will doesn’t like it that much, but I guess you can’t win them all. Or maybe he’ll end up improving it again in a couple of decades.)

Ingredients

• 2 or 3 yellow onions
• ~2 tbs oil (vegetable, canola, etc.)
• 2-3 lbs ground beef (closer to 2 lbs if lean, 3 if fatty)
• 2 cans (16 oz.) or 1 can (28 oz.) of tomatoes (crushed, diced, stewed, or whole tomatoes)
• 2 cans (16 oz.) or 1 can (28 oz.) of tomato sauce
• 1 lb of dry beans (I usually use pinto beans but small red beans and a lot of others will work as well)
• ~2 tbs apple cider vinegar or other vinegar
• ~2 tbs chili powder
• ~1/2 to 1 tsp of each of the following spices:
  • granulated garlic or garlic powder (or 1-2 cloves fresh garlic minced)
  • ground oregano / mexican oregano
  • cumin
  • paprika (sweet or smoked)
  • allspice
  • cinnamon
  • ground pepper

Steps

1. If cooking beans in a regular pot on the stovetop, they should have soaked overnight before this, and getting the beans cooking should be the first step. Add the rinsed, soaked, and drained beans to a pan with at least an inch of fresh water over the top and simmer, covered, for I believe 60-120 minutes. Check occasionally and add water if necessary. If cooking beans in an instant pot, see step 8, beginning after the chili meat mixture is simmering.
2. Chop up the onions. I usually dice them.
3. Heat a dutch oven, large soup pan, etc. over medium heat
4. Add oil and then add onions. Saute for about 10 minutes (until they start to brown or caramelize or at least become translucent)
5. Add vinegar and spices and mix around, kind of toasting the spices a bit, but they should mix with the oil and vinegar and liquid from the onions
6. Add ground beef - break up and cook with onions and spices until browned - I usually salt the meat a bit when I put it in
7. Add canned tomatoes and tomato sauce, and simmer uncovered for up to 2 hours, stirring every 10-15 minutes
8. If NOT cooking beans on the stovetop already: once the onion-meat-tomato mixture has been simmering for a while, rinse the beans and add them to an instant pot with enough water to cover them about an inch deep, and pressure cook for about 30-40 minutes, doing a quick-release (10 minutes?) at the end
9. Add salt to the beans when finished
10. Add beans to the chili mixture, including some or all of the bean liquid
11. continue to simmer for a while altogether until it cooks down a little more, then serve

Serve with

• tortilla chips
• guacamole
• sour cream
• lettuce
• shredded cheese
• limes
• hot sauces (for me because no one else in my family likes it hot - one time I used some different chili powder I got that had more heat and no one else liked that batch, so I froze it in portions and had it all to myself for the next while)
• tomatoes or tomato salsas (gratuitous because the chili has so much tomato in it already)

Having it over cornbread or baked/microwaved potatoes are also good options.

References and Notes

Source of recipe: my variations and enhancement of a recipe from my Grandma Naoma transcribed by my mom, that I never actually made while she was alive.

Log

Original Recipe

Transcribed by my mother and given as a printout in 2008

Ingredients

2 medium onions
3 lbs ground chuck or lean ground beef
2 16 oz. cans stewed or crushed tomatoes
2 16 oz. cans tomato sauce
1 small bag of small red beans
5 tsps vinegar
6 tsps chili powder

Directions

1. Wash and drain beans
2. Boil beans in water and salt with the lid on approximately 2 hours (or until tender)
3. Brown onions in oil
4. Add vinegar and chili power
5. Add ground beef and brown with above ingredients
6. Add tomatoes and tomato sauce
7. Simmer approximately 2 hours
8. Combine beans with sauce mixture and simmer a little while

Servings

?

Other Past Notes or Narratives

Standalone post link: Recipe: Grandma Naoma's Chili (Josh's Version)

I saw several fish swimming in the creek¹ this morning, as many as eight to twelve. A grey ghostly shadowed slow shimmering of fins and scales in a protected pocket of murky water beneath the rough old rock wall, across on the neighbor’s side.² I didn’t think I could capture them sufficiently in a photograph or video, especially at that distance.

They looked a little sickly or diseased to me, but perhaps I am projecting that onto them because the creek smells foul these days, and I understand it to be somewhat polluted, both from readings (see link in¹ below) and past personal observations³. In actuality I guess these fish are flourishing? I’ll check on them again soon.

Standalone post link: Murky Shimmer | Picture Not Taken

I want to learn how to take honest photographs with my phone.¹ Until then, I just have quick snapshots that I feel inclined to share for some reason.²

This was my walking destination and writing spot yesterday morning.

Here were the geese making a lunch stop in the softball field again.³

This was my writing spot and conditions this morning and right now.

Standalone post link: Writing Spot Snapshots 2025-12-31 and 2026-01-01

I’ve left this site derelict but at the end of the year now I’m wishing I had kept up a comprehensive reading log and music log here, (my own personal ad hoc ‘wrapped’), so I might retroactively populate my site and feed with a bunch of backdated posts, mostly reading log updates. Just a heads up if you are out there somehow following this feed.

Standalone post link: ''joshuawxyzmetaupdate20251231''

I updated my now page today. This post snapshots the current version.

Now

• continuing to “INST TECH LIBRARY MEDIA” all over ‘em +

  a couple of recent notable artifacts: Sora collection development - ‘New Books in Granite’s Sora’, library circulation stats (physical and digital combined)

• rewilding my front yard +

  I am an official grant recipient of the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program and I actually picked up my 150-ish little baby native plants yesterday! Need to get them in the ground soon. I should post more about this.

• started biking, mostly just around town, and I’m actually enjoying it +
  I have a lot of thoughts about this, such as why this is suddenly do-able for me after decades away, what I’m discovering about my city by exploring it this way, whether I will start actually mountain biking and realizing maybe I actually don’t like mountain biking and hiking, I like walking through the woods and deserts but not climbing mountains or rushing down mountains, but these should be their own post or posts, so I’ll refrain from an endless note here.
• new owner of an iPhone Air, preorderd and obtained day of release +
  I’m not usually an early purchaser/adopter and I was actually still quite content with my existing phone (an iPhone 13 mini). My daughter needs a phone, though, so I’m passing the 13 mini to her, but I made her wait until these new 17 phones came out. Decided to go for the somewhat ridiculous Air because it just looked like it would be nice to have and fun to use, something different and new. I don’t have a tablet/iPad/ereader or anything like that and I like to read and do tablet-y stuff on my phone so that helped me justify it - yet another thing I could probably explore more thoroughly and post
• finishing up a CSA subscription - its one of the New Roots CSAs and I pick it up right at their Redwood Farm every Tuesday. +
  This has been equal parts fun to try and exceedingly stressful. By my hopes and designs It forced me to try cooking and eating a lot of new-to-me things, many of which I liked, but now I have a secondary fridge full of specific, weird vegetables (beets, chard, kale) at varying levels of freshness to rottenness that I can’t deal with because though I like them I don’t always want to cook these particular things and no one else in my family really likes vegetables like I do - I should write and post about this experience as well.

Next

• get those baby native plants into the ground in the next week or so
• remember this website
  • start logging my listening, reading, playing, etc. here again, writing book reviews, etc.
  • start writing about other stuff here, too
  • cultivate a thriving digital garden
• figure out how to keep my phone primarily as a tool for learning, creativity, positive communication
• stop ignoring all the things wrong with my house and get some things working and decent
• ChatGLP-1?

This reflects my ‘now’ page update of September 21, 2025. Please visit that main now page to see my dynamic log galleries, as well as an archive of prior and newer ‘now’ updates.¹

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’

Standalone post link: Now and Next (September 21, 2025)

cute little peaches from this cute little peach tree I planted in my backyard two years ago

They taste pretty good, and they didn’t really have any bugs or problems, though I did no pesticides or really anything special beyond deep watering the tree once or twice a week starting mid-May. And though they are small, the pits are small, too, so there still is a good amount of fruit in each one for their diminutive size. They are little plum-sized peaches. And thankfully freestone.

I planted this as a small, bare root in April 2023. The variety is either New Haven Peach (according to my planting notes) or Red Haven Peach (according to the original order invoice), sourced from Burnt Ridge Nursery in Onalaska, Washington.

Additional updates on my backyard mini-orchard

In April 2023 I also planted a nectarine tree that was initially larger than this peach tree. While the peach tree thrives the nectarine just gets along. It has a few fruits growing on it that are still hard. Birds or squirrels have already taken nips at some of them, but left the rest behind. I’m not super confident that they will be a good harvest this year, if even edible.

I also planted two pear trees in April 2023. They blossomed for the first time this year, and one of them has a single pear growing on the very end of a branch, hanging down close to the ground. I think pears are supposed to take 3-5 years before they start truly bearing fruit, so we are on track with the pears.

This spring I planted four apple trees, all bare root whips, boosting my backyard mini-orchard to a total of eight trees. They all leafed out but a couple seem to be struggling in this endless dry heat. I need to nurse them through it and hopefully from the fall to spring they can establish themselves better. I planted one each of Kidd’s Orange Red, Black Oxford, Rubinette, and Ozark Gold.

My daughter requested today that we plant a pomengranate tree. This is irregular for northern Utah, but I understand from certain posts in the Utah Rare Fruit Growers group on Facebook it is entirely possible with certain cultivars and certain interventions, so perhaps I will explore that for next year. If I’m going to try a pomengranate I will probably try a fig as well.

Standalone post link: cute little peaches from this cute little peach tree I planted in my backyard two years ago

Standalone post link: ''''

I updated my now page today. This post snapshots the current version.

Now

• support, training, troubleshooting around our library management software +

  guiding the library and technology staff in my school district through several recent software updates and other technical changes to our library and resource management software (Destiny)

• curation and collection development in between all the tech support +

  filling student purchase recommendations, buying more copies of the most popular books, and making fun collections in our ebook/audiobook platform for students (Sora)

• rewilding most of my yard +

  took one of the recent mild, warm days off to plant a bunch of native wildflower seeds in pots just before the current snowstorms - may still have been a waste of time at this point as I should have done this back in the late fall, but hopefully the weather will stay cool enough for a few more weeks for them to be cold stratified and at least some of them will grow and I can put them in the ground later (I discovered last year that sowing directly into the ground during a woodchip grass/weed smother didn’t really work)

• cooking real food occasionally +

  examples: I sort of figured out stir fry finally, I recently made a homemade chocolate sauce/syrup that I really love, and I spent way too much money on a shipment of single origin spices from Burlap & Barrel that arrived last night

• spending many evenings playing euchre and rummy 500 on CardzMania.com +

  Yes, that’s ‘cardzmania’ with a ‘z’ - this isn’t really a problem except for it is what I am doing instead of other things I supposedly want to be doing like reading, writing, working on this website, or even playing other video games

• listening to every track by Big Thief on shuffle +

  because I’ve wanted to see them for years but never could, and found out they are doing a Twilight Concert in Salt Lake in September for just $20 a ticket and I got a ticket and now I just need to figure out if or how I can convince anyone in my family to go to this concert with me - no worries if not, though, I will not hesitate to go by myself

Next

• rebrand our old “Get Outside!” Sora collection as “Touch Grass,” and also get outside more myself (though probably not literally touch grass because I already smothered our grass with woodchips)
• get even more serious and official about this rewilding thing and apply for the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program
• try cooking more real things with all these new spices I just got
• make using this website and sharing things on the internet a consistent part of my life again

This reflects my ‘now’ page update of March 15, 2025. Please visit that main now page to see my dynamic log galleries, as well as an archive of prior and newer ‘now’ updates.¹

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’

Standalone post link: Now and Next (March 15, 2025)

On some lowkey Wallace Stevens shit this Sunday morning.

It’s a blustery, dark day, though. No sunny chair. No green-winged cockatoo around. Closest thing is the calls of migrant geese on the wind, and our dog’s occasional whimpers at the creaking trees and house noises, and/or at us for just sitting around.

Especially appropriate because I used to be a believing Mormon so coffee is a no-no for every morning, but perhaps an especial sacralege for Sunday morning when I’m supposed to be at church taking the sacrament and recommitting to do and not do a bunch of things such as not drink coffee. Death and resurrection, newness of life. Awake and arise.

Standalone post link: On some lowkey Wallace Stevens shit this Sunday morning