Fire and Ice: Making Chili for Chimps

The cold days of winter make us yearn for warm comfort food. And there’s nothing better on a chilly day than a bowl of vegan chili.

Vegan chili? You read that right. And I’m talking about an award-winning vegan chili that helps the chimps.

Let’s get cookin’

Last year, we looked for opportunities to expand our community relationships and joined in a major annual event in our Blue Ridge Mountain community, the Fire and Ice Chili Cook-off.

Everyone attends the chili competition, thousands of people actually. So we entered the competition to recruit new volunteers, engage with our local supporters, and gather donations for the chimps. We had no intention of being a serious chili competitor.

We set out to find a recipe we could stand behind and also tasted good. As an organization that protects animals, we are dedicated that whenever possible, we will not harm any other animal in our activities, thus, our chili recipe needed to be vegan. We are also grateful that one of our founding supporters, Rachael Ray, had a chili recipe available online that could be adapted to vegan, and with her permission, we started there.

“Chimp Chili” is born

But how do we connect chili with chimpanzees? This was still the dilemma. We took the recipe to our Nutrition Committee and adapted it further; using only ingredients we would feed to the chimpanzees, which meant we also removed chilies from the recipe. This is how our Project Chimps Chimp Chili was born.

On the day of the of the chili cook-off, we made 15 gallons of our new concoction, and were tickled when all the other competitors stopped by to taste this outlier on the menu and tried hard not to indicate they liked it (because they really did). As you may suspect, no one had entered a vegan chili before, particularly one made from chimpanzee-friendly food. No one skipped our booth, we handed a sample to thousands of guests.

Winner, winner, chili dinner

Finally, the moment of truth arrived. Five judges tasted each competitor’s chili and scored them in a blind taste test. After we submitted our sample, we took off our aprons, laid down our ladles, and headed over to watch the closing ceremony and see which of our competitors would take home trophies.

To our shock, the judges announced that Project Chimps had taken first place in the civic category AND scored highest in flavor among ALL of the chilies in the competition! You could have knocked me over with a feather.

A vegan chili, made without any chilies, and designed so it could be fed to humans and chimpanzees alike, scored higher than those from the restaurants who had dominated the competition since it started.

On Saturday, February 16, we will defend our championship title! But even if we don’t place, we will be out in our community, telling the stories of the chimps, recruiting volunteers, meeting supporters, and most importantly, having fun.

If you are local, come visit us at the competition on Main Street in downtown Blue Ridge. And try making the Chimp Chili at home and let us know what you think!

This article appeared in the Project Chimps February newsletter.