Well, let me just say you are, in fact, as legit as I thought, even more, and hopefully you caught the ‘negatives’ were all silly, and let me re-emphasize the praise. :)

I’m proud of my cooking in general, but on chili - I definitely haven’t taken the steps to work with the actual dried chiles like that. But I’m happy with my recipe at the moment, and it’s all a balance of energy (with health issues) and results :)

Keep up the awesome chili, my friend!