Trust me, eat this

You know how someone will tell you, "Less is more," and you're all, "Screw that, I'm throwing another 15 ingredients into this soup because I know that one of them will make it transcendently awesome?"  And then the soup sucks because really, who wants creamy chili cheddar chicken soup with rice and noodles and cabbage, for God's sake?

This is not one of those recipes.

This is a recipe that is so good, I'm staying up late to write a real post on my last day of vacation.  Behold the many facets of its awesomeness:

• It's got 10 ingredients, only two of which need to be chopped and one of which is optional
• It can be ready in 20 minutes flat
• It only gets two pots and a strainer dirty, yet it's not spaghetti
• It came off the back of a bag of Pennsylvania Dutch egg noodles about 20 years ago, back when men were men, chili beef noodles were chili beef noodles and nobody east of California thought about putting seitan in anything
• It's called "chili," yet contains none of those mealy little red beans that people insist on throwing into their otherwise perfectly decent recipes

Chili Beef Noodles

1 pound ground beef

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons chili powder

16 ounces canned tomatoes

15 ounces tomato sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

hot pepper sauce (optional)

8 ounces egg noodles

In a large skillet, brown the ground beef, onion, and garlic.  Drain.  Stir in the chili powder; add tomatoes, tomato sauce, salt, and pepper.  Add hot pepper sauce to taste, if you like your food spicy.  Simmer 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally.  Meanwhile, cook a whole bag of wide egg noodles according to package directions.  Serve meat mixture over egg noodles.

Serves 6