When the cookbook Chili Nation by Jane & Michael Stern was published in 1998 Amazon.com featured a sample recipe--Chesapeake Bay Chili. I printed out that recipe and tried it. The Maryland chili became a meal often made for special occasions; it was that good!

On a recent trip to NYC we took some time browsing the aisles at the Strand used bookstore. Chili Nation practically jumped out at me. Friday Night Chili was born. The cookbook has 50 recipes, one for each state, and every Friday night we make a chili and cook our way through the book. We have a rating system that goes from 1 to 4 and hope that by the end of the book we will have narrowed down the best 5 chili recipes that we will continue to cook.

I'm going to have to backtrack a bit, because we are already up to Nevada. Our plan is to have a chili party when we have finished (timewise it coincides with my son Geoff's college graduation). Geoff, his younger brother Ted, and I are the key players in this project. I'll try to catch you up as we go along.