A warm cozy recipe for a cold winters day ~ Caribbean Chili by author Ane Mulligan

Cozy Comforts Blog welcomes best selling author Ane Mulligan for a fun chat, a toasty recipe and a little introduction about her current novel, Great Springs Revival!

~Author Ane Mulligan~

While a large, floppy straw hat is her favorite, bestselling novelist Ane Mulligan has worn many: hairdresser, legislative affairs director (that's a fancy name for a lobbyist), drama director, playwright, humor columnist, and novelist. Her lifetime experience provides a plethora of fodder for her Southern-fried fiction. She firmly believes coffee and chocolate are two of the four major food groups. President of the award-winning literary site, Novel Rocket, Ane resides in Suwanee, GA, with her artist husband, her chef son, and two dogs of Biblical proportion. You can find Ane on her Southern-fried Fiction website, Google+, Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, and Pinterest.

One Sunday morning, our Bible study group leader challenged the men to a chili cook-off. Never one to let a challenge go unanswered, Hubs entered. What causes men to do that? It has to be the testosterone or a competitive gene. After all, a woman who didn't cook wouldn't enter a culinary contest. Well, unless it was Claire from Chapel Springs Revival. She definitely would.

Hubs isn't Claire, nor is he a chef. Granted, he can make a killer jam buttie (that's a British term for bread and jam), and he warms up soup with the best of them.

While I waited for a lack-of-knowledge confession, he spent a couple of hours surfing the Internet for a recipe he thought would win. Finally, the admission came. He didn't have a clue.

I weighed the Valentine's Day Cruise against rescuing him from this testosterone-induced pickle. He's a lovable Brit, so I pulled out all my recipe files and notebooks. After searching for a few minutes, I found a scrap of paper with this recipe scribbled on it, down in the bottom of an old recipe box. It was one of my mother's. Where she got it, I have no idea. But it looked so unusual we tried it.

Hubs won the chili cook-off.

Caribbean Chili

2 lbs. lean pork, cut into cubes

1 C orange juice

½ C lime juice

½ C lemon juice

¼ C olive oil

6 cloves garlic, chopped

4 large onions, sliced

4 green bell peppers, seeded and sliced

2 Tbsp cumin

1 Tbsp oregano

½ tsp cloves

1 small jalapeno pepper, chopped

½ C raisins

½ C water

2, 16 oz. cans Caribbean flavored black beans, un-drained (or if necessary, 2, 16 oz cans regular black beans)

Option:  serve with sour cream, lime wedges, flour tortillas and/or shredded cheese.

Marinate the pork cubes in the orange juice, lime juice and lemon juice overnight. I do mine in a large Ziplock bag.

The next day, drain marinade. Sauté the pork cubes in olive oil till brown.

In a large slow cooker, add all the ingredients and stir once.

Cook on low 6-8 hours.

Serves 6

Option:  serve with sour cream, lime wedges, flour tortillas and/or shredded cheese.

Chapel Springs Revival

With a friend like Claire, you need a gurney, a mop, and a guardian angel.

Everybody in the small town of Chapel Springs, Georgia, knows best friends Claire and Patsy. It's impossible not to, what with Claire's zany antics and Patsy's self-appointed mission to keep her friend out of trouble. And trouble abounds. Chapel Springs has grown dilapidated and the tourist trade has slackened. With their livelihoods threatened, they join forces to revitalize the town. No one could have guessed the real issue needing restoration is their marriages.

With their personal lives in as much disarray as the town, Claire and Patsy embark on a mission of mishaps and miscommunication, determined to restore warmth to Chapel Springs —and their lives. That is if they can convince their husbands and the town council, led by two curmudgeons who would prefer to see Chapel Springs left in the fifties and closed to traffic.

Thanks, Ane for sharing your great recipe and best of luck on this great book!!