The ice will be cool and the chili hot when the Chili Winter Warmup gets under way this Sunday at noon in the Danbury
Ice Arena. If you love chili, get ready to eat a lot of it. The main event of the afternoon will be a Chili Cook-off, and you can sample as many offerings as you like, at no extra cost beyond admission to this fun-filled fundraiser. Chili-making teams are now plotting recipes and deciding which ingredients will make for an award-winning entry. “My chili is actually a concoction of about six recipes,” says Joan Mead of Danbury, who will be making chili for the Danbury Exchange Club’s entry. The club is a community-service organization. Joan’s husband, Al Mead, is a past president and now a regional director. “He volunteered me,” she says. “I’ve only been making chili for about a year. My husband and I do a lot of tailgate picnics when we attend sports events, so I decided I had to learn to make a good chili. It’s the perfect food for tailgate dining.” She describes her six-recipe chili as being “spicy, but not so hot that you can’t comfortably eat a bowl of it.”
Jason Lareau, chef for Pippa’s Sports Café, will be entering the chili he whips up daily in the Danbury restaurant.