The Chili Fixin' Debate

So Sam and I have been married just over a month, and though our tastes in music, movies, food, and rugs seem to mesh rather perfectly, a couple of incidents have come up that made me realize we don't do absolutely everything the same way. This realization was a little alarming at first -- you mean there are things I don't know about this person I've vowed to spend the rest of my life with? Case in point: chili accoutrements. On Halloween, as the chilly (ho!) weather was first starting to roll in, we decided to make a big pot of the good stuff and have a scary movie marathon. (Gremlins, anyone?) When it came time to serve it up, we grated some cheddar cheese and pulled out the sour cream, but Sam still had one question: Where's the macaroni? And I was like, what do you need macaroni for? Meanwhile I pulled out a giant bag of Fritos and began to sprinkle them on the sides of my bowl. Sam looked at me with some disgust. "Fritos, gross!" I looked at him with equal disgust as he began to boil water for his macaroni, which is, apparently, how he grew up eating chili. (I have since learned that spaghetti is a popular addition to this dish around the Cincinatti area, while only 200 miles south, in Nashville, Fritos reign supreme). I added some macaroni to my chili and he added some Fritos to his, but I think we both still dig what we've grown up on. The Fritos add a salty crunchy to the spicy mush of chili, but what do noodles add? I still don't know. All the same, it was a good exercise in appreciating our differences, albeit small ones, and should help as we enter Christmas tree season. (He's grown up on fake ones, my family has always gone to tree farms.) I offered to compromise by going really fake, sparkly, and fabulous (see photo) --but so far, he isn't going for it. Stay tuned fair readers.