Hurricane Ike is bearing down on us today in the Houston and Galveston areas. Per instructions from our mayor Bill White, Lisa, Ryan and I are preparing to "hunker down" and weather the storm.

As final preparations for the storm I broke out my favorite chili recipe...actually I am kind of making it up as I go along...and am cooking up a big pot of chili for the weekend.

This recipe calls for a pound or two of your favorite ground meat, a couple of links of Mexican chorizo, my secret ingredient, and a cup or so of kidney beans.

I started out by soaking the beans overnight last night. First thing this morning I added a tablespoon Gebhardt's Chili Powder and a vegetable bouillon cube to the beans, brought them to a boil and let them simmer for a couple of hours.

In the meantime, I put a load of laundry in to wash and brought all the heavy items from my backyard into the garage so they won't blow around in the heavy winds we are expecting. You can skip this step if you are not expecting a severe storm.

Next I heated up my biggest pot in preparation to cook the meat. Today I used a pound and a half of ground venison, but first I chopped up a couple...ok, six jalapenos, and threw them in the pot with a tablespoon of olive oil. After letting the peppers simmer for a few minutes, I added the ground meat and chorizo and browned all the meat until it was cooked through. Next I added some seasoning, first 2 tablespoons of Gebhardt's Chili Powder, 1 tablespoon of ground cumin and a teaspoon of onion powder.

After the meat is all cooked and seasoned add a 15 ounce can of Rotel tomatoes with peppers and a 15 ounce can of tomato sauce and by this time your beans should be all cooked up and ready to add to the mix!

That's about it, let the whole thing simmer for an hour or two. You may need to add a little more liquid, like a cup of water or a can of beer. I find that the longer you let it cook, the better the tastes all blend together. Of course you can adjust any of the ingredients to suit your taste. I promise this will become your favorite chili recipe too!

Now I am off to wait for Hurricane Ike. He should make landfall sometime around midnight tonight, so wish us all luck. It looks like this will be a nasty storm.

As always, The Heat! is brought to you by Chef Jay and Chile-Pepper-Sauces.com