The first batch I made was quite a disorganized effort as it seemed like everything happened and needed attention all at once. The one last night was far more leisurely.
Before starting with the meat, get all the vegetables taken care of. If you can see my (facebook-hosted) photo, the green pepper is chopped up in the bowl, the jalapenos are chopped up on a small plate, the onion is chopped and in the measuring cup (side note: a cup's worth of chopped onion is roughly half of a whole onion). In the slow cooker I've already got the two cans of diced tomatoes, the can of sauce, and the can of chiles poured in and stirred. No spices yet. You can start preheating it to help thin it out to make it easier to stir the meat in.
The ground beef & sausage get cooked first in a frying pan on the stove. Add the onions, garlic, and grill seasoning while it's cooking. Once the meat is mostly cooked add the chopped green pepper and stir it around for another minute or two. The meat will cook pretty quickly like this which is what got me the first time...it was ready before I had anything to add it to. I just use a fork to keep stirring everything around until it's all cooked evenly.
Before adding it to the pot, drain the liquid out of the frying pan. I usually use my carving knife as a sort of 'dam' while tilting the pan at an angle over the sink. If you don't drain it, the liquid in the pan will float to the top in your slow cooker and just be generally gross.
Dump the meat/peppers/onions into the slow cooker and stir everything up, and add the spices at this time too. Get everything all blended up well (it might look kinda chunky at this point, it'll thin out), put the lid on, and walk away for a few hours.
