While I was growing up, our house was the evening stop on Christmas Eve for relatives and friends, who would congregate in the late afternoon and early evening for a meal centered on the contents of two very large pots on my mother’s stovetop. One contained pinto beans, soaked and seasoned for a couple of days, and piping hot. The other contained her wonderful chili, a crock-pot treatment of which I have perfected over the ensuing decades. The meal also had a few other key ingredients.
