Last night I made a chili  dinner for 36 of my cohousing neighbors.

I billed it as “Grandma Nellie’s Famous Chili” but the reality is that in most of my memories, it was my father making the chili. (My mom never did.)

There seemed to be only two types of cooking available to the men in my family: barbecue, and chili. Women did everything else.

The chili of my youth included canned kidney beans, ground beef, onions, canned tomatoes, and chili powder. We ate it with saltines, or sometimes cornbread.

In my hippie days chili was vegetarian and included all sorts of vegetables, which my family would consider an abomination.

Now I sometimes cook beans from scratch, and the beef I use is grass-fed. I still like it with saltines but my hippie neighbors would probably balk at those, so I make cornbread. I have come to like my own cornbread even more than Nellie’s, which feels sacrilegious somehow.

So, here for Art Every Day Month is my Family Tree of Chili: my grandmother Nellie, who just celebrated her 100th birthday; my grandfather Elko, whose Cherokee name I have tattooed (in Cherokee) on my back; my father Bob; and me.