single recipe calls for:
• 1# ground turkey
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 tsp jarred minced garlic
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 3/4 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 (15-16 ounce) can kidney beans, rinsed and drained or 1 (15-16 ounce) can pinto beans, if desired

Went with a 3# purchase of ground turkey, managed to divide roughly in thirds with minimal skin contact, wrapped 2 hunks of ~1# each separately in wax paper, and set the last third aside. Somehow at the store I thought the double-recipe was 1# of meat; but it was only one of 2 packages of ground turkey on the shelf, and the other package was some oddball measure like 2.68#, so it's not like I would have ended up with an exact two-double-recipes purchase in any event.

Diced 1 smallish yellow onion without cutting myself. Dunno what I was thinking when I bought FOUR fresh onions, but each smallish yellow onion is easily 3/4 to a cup diced, so I may end up dicing and freezing the other 3 yet.

Added 2 (heaping) tsp. jarred minced garlic, and put it on medium heat, covered, to saute with a small dash of olive oil and a splash of the dregs of the Vendange merlot.

Last time (ez chili 1.2), I cooked down the ground turkey first, in hopes of being able to pour off some amount of grease; but the grease was pretty much soaked up in the meat at the end of that stage. So this time I sauted the pungent veggies first, aiming for a distinct caramelization before adding meat - because once meat is added, there will inevitably be a good deal of onion/garlic that never sees the bottom of the saucepan again. It took only ~7 minutes for that to start sizzling so I lowered to low-medium heat. Hard to gauge with the fumes circulating in my cramped bedroom/kitchen, but eventually the onion got soft and glassy, and fumes lost their raw edge, without burning anything. Call it ~25 minutes.

At this point I was questioning my recipe proportions, and had to recheck from source. With only double-recipe cans of tomato on hand, I had to bust one of the wax-papered 1# hunks of ground turkey back out of the freezer. If I had less than a full cup of onion in there? Oh well! I'm not a big fan of onion anyway. The whole point of onions was to provide some body and veggie caramelization.

2# of turkey, a pound of which was chilled close to freezing by this point, plopped in the saucepan over the onion/garlic base and covered, and heat turned back up to medium. After 15 minutes it was non-pink on the outside but otherwise raw throughout, so I broke/stirred it up and re-covered. Another 15 minutes and it was cooked throughout, and meat scents mingling with the mellowing onion/garlic. Stirred again and left on the low side of medium heat, with the lid offset a bit to let some more water boil off, for another 10 minutes. Still wasn't drying out or browning appreciably, so I turned it up to the low side of high heat for the last 5 minutes, and while I didn't see caramelization per se, the result was dry-ish as intended... and not burnt, which would have been disastrous.

So now we're up to at least an hour of prep and saute (15 minutes for "pungents" and 45 minutes of TLC for the ground turkey), even before the tomato layer goes on. And frankly, the onion/garlic part could stand a more thorough caramelizing.

Canned tomato product added, cans rinsed with a trickle of water to get the last flecks of tomato solids out, spices added (subbing cayenne entirely for black pepper), and cooked on medium-low heat for 40 minutes. Again, this is a comfortably-full (not dangerously full) 3-qt saucepan. Half a 12oz bag of pintos, pre-soaked and frozen, brings it to dangerously full. Return to medium simmer and cook another 20 minutes (plus).

Turned heat off at 8:14 but left it on the heating element to meld and soften some more while it cooled.