To annoy the notorious Leuk, I decided to write a short recipe to my Chili con carne. Be advised that I like hot food, and that Habanero chilis carry quite a punch, as they can score some hundred thousand units on the Scoville scale.

Ingredients for a large pot (should be enough for two to three really hungry persons or four to six normal eaters):

1000g of ground meat (beef)

2 800g (480g drained) cans of peeled beef tomatoes (either whole or sliced – or if you got the time to spare, get fresh beef tomatoes, grill them whole until the peel get burned and can easily be removed)

2 400g (250g drained) cans of kidney beans

2-4 onions

2-3 bell peppers (I prefer green ones)

2-8 garlic gloves (depending on your preferences, and appearances in the public)

1-5 habanero chilis (optionally: use several kinds of chilis)

cumin (pulverized)

salt

pepper

tabasco

red pepper spice (pulverized chilis)

olive oil

Peel onions and garlic, cut into small dices. Wash peppers and habanero chilis, cut bell peppers into quarter sized pieces, and small dices from the habaneros. You can remove the white inner and seed from the habaneros, which will make them a bit less hot. Allow excess to drip off the beans through a sieve. Do not remove liquid from beef tomatoes!

Season beef with salt, pepper and cumin, put some olive oil in a large pot and put on the hot stove. Glaze onions first, add garlic and beef. Sear while stirring continuously. As soon as the meat is browned, add kidney beans and tomatoes.

Allow the chili to boil up, then reduce heat and let simmer for at least 30 minutes. Tomatoes should be cooked to rags before adding bell peppers and habanero chilis. Allow to simmer another 10-15 minutes – bell peppers should still be al dente.

Season to taste with salt, pepper, cumin (lots of cumin), red pepper spice and Tabasco.

If possible, prepare the Chili a day before consuming to allow the chili to soak through. Serve with freshly roasted bread.

This Chili con carne is not true to the original recipes, as it contains beans, as well as tomatoes. However, that’s the way european Chili con carne is commonly cooked, and if I find the time, I’ll provide some more recipes, including vegetarian Chili sin carne and a “real” Chili con carne.

Googlefinally figured out how to make money with YouTube, and it’s a way that everyone saw coming: Video commercials. First tests with video ads were reported a while ago, but now it seems to be getting serious.

According to the YouTube Biz Blog, tests are currently running to determinate the best advertising format.

To me it always appeared to be the only way Google could make up for some of the money they’re burning with YouTube – the initial price tag, the tremendous amount of bandwidth and legal issues come to mind. Since non-video ads on YouTube proved to be less than well received by users as well as advertisers, forcing users to actually notice ads by either having a prerolled video ad or some “commercial breaks” within a video seems to logical choice.

Educated guess: YouTube will soon have commercial breaks in their videos. Prerolled ads are easier to skip, and everyone is used to see commercial breaks from TV. However, since in-video ads won’t be seen if the playback gets stopped or the page closed, I would bet that non-video ads aren’t likely to vanish either. That would make a mixture of both formats, a (short) “presented by” and one or more short in-video commercials the best choice for advertisers – and therefore for YouTube.

As always, ads are likely to drive users away, but where to? Most other online video hosts already have commercials, and if “Don’t be evil” Google/YouTube is heading in that direction, I expect other companys with a more relaxed attitude towards evil to increase ads.

Where’s that leading to? Given the changes in online video, I’d expect to see subscription models to show up earlier or later that will allow users to see commercial free videos, including TV and movie content, which, in the long term, will substitute TV as we currently know it. Obviously, that statement is neither new, nor has it been proven yet, but given the receding time that is being spent in front of the TV (especially by the younger viewers) and the increasing time that is being spent on online video platforms, I’d say it’s a matter of time.