Recipe: Cornbread Chili Bake

I'm always on the lookout for a quick 'n easy crowd pleasers and if the reception of this new recipe at my community group on Sunday night is anything to go by, then this is a new favorite!  It's perfect for rainy fall football days, too!

Yesterday I was a Trader Joe's which is so fun, but because everything is so fun, I end up spending twice as much there as I do at Kroger's.  For almost twice as much food, so that's good.  But then, the food itself is so good that I tend to eat it twice as fast.  Not good.  Anyway, I grabbed one of the samples they had and it was really good.  Like do a double take and wander back to figure out exactly what it is good.  And lo and behold, only 3 ingredients.  Welcome to my recipe book yummy new easy (and cheap!) pot-luck recipe.

So without further ado: Cornbread Chile Bake

3 cans of chili (they used Vegetarian at TJ's, I picked up their turkey chili for mine)
1 Pub Cheese (hmm...Publix cheese?  Are you sending me to a different store?  I have no idea what this is?  Oh, it's a kind of cheese sold at TJ's.  Basically, it's what we called "spready cheese" growing up in my house.  I think you'd be fine to substitute about 1 c of shredded cheese).
1 Package of TJ Cornbread Mix (or another brand is also probably fine.

Dump 3 cans of chili in 9 x 13 pan.  (Don't you love this recipe already?)  In separate bowl, follow directions to make cornbread batter (TJ's calls for egg, milk, and oil).  Add cheese to cornbread batter.  Mix it up.  Spread cheesy cornbread batter over chili.  Stick it in the over for 30 minutes at 350.  You're done.

How.
Easy.
Was.
That.

And it's so good.  Like so good that about 6 people asked for the recipe right off the bat.  And so good that I myself was kind of surprised when I took a bite.  And so good that I was kind of ticked that everybody ate it all because that would have been awfully nice as leftovers this week.  Fortunately, the few ingredients meant that the total cost of the meal came in around $10.  Definitely doable.

Twists:  At TJ's they used the pub cheese with jalapenos.  It was just a twinge spicy for me, so I bought plain sharp cheddar.  But feel free to mix it up with spices.  I also thought about adding more veggies to the chili or something else to the cornbread (corn? rotel?).  Definitely share if you come up with a fun twist on this recipe.

How do you remember something you weren't there for?

I was in first grade when the Challenger exploded.  I lived just a couple of hours north of Cape Canaveral, close enough that you can sometimes hear the sonic boom as the shuttles blast towards space.  It was first grade, though, and we were all going to be able to watch the shuttle take off.  However, we had a substitute teacher that day and apparently we had been misbehaving so our punishment was that we were not going to be able to watch the shuttle take off.  In many ways this ended up being a protection to our little hearts and minds because what first grader needs to see a space shuttle explode.  I was in my 20s before I ever saw the footage.  Even though it was in many ways a blessing to miss the live coverage of that event, I always felt detached from what for many of my peers was the defining tragedy of our childhood.

Fast forward about 15 years and I'm a 22-year-old two weeks into my first year in China.  Sept 11, 2001 was just another day for us.  We taught our classes and went to bed.  Shortly before midnight that night, our team leaders called to tell us there was an emergency team meeting.  They had been informed of the attack on the US by an Australian ex-pat on our campus and then called home to try and find out what they could.  We met, and prayed, and shared what information we could (which was precious little).  We returned to our rooms and I and my two roommates all climbed into Helen's bed sitting in a little row holding each other and desperately trying to find out more on the internet.  The internet was so, so slow.  And msnbc had basically crashed at that point because of traffic.  There was no facebook or twitter or youtube.  We cried and worried and prayed and eventually drifted off into fitful sleep.

The next day, while our country mourned, we got up and went off to teach class.  For us, it was just another day, one like any other that year.  Except we were exhausted and still really didn't know all that was going on back home.  Our Chinese colleagues expressed their sorrow, but this was shortly after the bombing of the Chinese embassy and the Hainan spy plane incident, so you did have to wonder whether that was said in complete sincerity or with a slight twist of thinking that the "superpower" America had finally gotten what it had coming.

Someone had apparently told the kids at the school because my classes all started the same way.  A group of Chinese 2nd graders would surround the desk at the front of the classroom.  They would call "Teacher, Teacher!" and lacking the words to say what they wanted to express, they would run around with their arms out making buzzing noises and then mimic crashing into something and make explosion sounds.  And then say "Sorry, Teacher, sorry." It was like the most horrifying game of charades ever.

At home, friends and family were off work, out of school and watching 24 hour coverage of the event. In China we were desperately flipping through Chinese TV stations trying to find footage of the events since none of the broadcasts were in English.  Life marched on very quickly for us in China.  There was no pause, no break.  There wasn't even really much information.  While my nation grieved and gave and rallied, I taught the A-B-C dance and the banana song to 80 seven year-olds.  My mom sent me a VHS of the telethon for 9/11, but we never got around to watching it.  By the time it arrived weeks after 9/11 life had quickly moved on in China.

Shortly after the attack, I remember going to an English Corner where some of the college students would practice their English with us.  One student came up to me asked about 9-1-1.  She said it like that - "nine one one" - and I assumed that she was talking about our emergency system and launched into a whole explanation about emergency and rescue services.  She was like "no, with the planes."  I had no idea that in America it was even being referred to as 9/11 (nine eleven) to make that connection for her.  I didn't know what we called "that day." 

Having not experienced the tragedy of 9/11 in my homeland, I was definitely disconnected from it.  I remember causing a friend's mom to break into tears in the candy aisle at Walgreens with my ignorant comments about 9/11 and the aftereffects.  So today, 11 years later, as my nation remembers and mourns again, I'm still struggling to understand what really happened, what it was really like to live through those horrible days and what the toll on my homeland was.  How do I remember something I wasn't here for?

Today I'm incredibly thankful for Meg Cabot's (yes, of the Princess Diaries) post on her experiences in downtown New York 11 years ago.  I'm thankful to her for providing one more bridge into understanding and identifying with how my country, my family, and my friends were affected on that horrible day.

Here's the link to her post about it.  Warning: I cried basically once a paragraph.

http://www.megcabot.com/2012/09/9112001/

Garden of Eden in our Homes

A few years ago I went to this lovely place I call Depression Camp because, well, I was depressed.  I had just come back early from my second assignment to East Asia because of what our staff counselor called an "acute depressive episode" which is basically where you turn into a Cymbalta commercial overnight.

I don't recommend having one of those.

But my wonderful agency recommended I go to Alongside for a couple of weeks, and I eagerly trotted off to Michigan.  No, of course I didn't.  I was depressed.  I somewhat less morosely than I had been doing anything else managed to get my sh*t together enough to get on a plane and go to strange place  with strange people to learn about how to deal with some of the hardest, darkest stuff I'd ever faced.  And there was group therapy.

However, it wasn't all group therapy (praise the LORD!) and I LOVED Depression Camp.  I had a cabin on a lake all to myself.  We would go to classes in the morning where I learned sooooo much about myself and about why and how I ended up where I was.  And then there was group therapy, so it couldn't all be perfect.  But then it was lunch, and a nap, and a walk, and a one-on-one counseling session.  And then reading.  And more sleeping.  I couldn't believe how much sleeping I could do in a day.

And I learned.  And I healed.  And I stood up for myself.  And I began to recognize where my theology had gone so terribly, terribly wrong.  And I rested without the pressure of a thousand different expectations and obligations (real or imagined).  And did I mention that I learned so stinkin' much?

One of the things I learned was how I had been wearing myself ragged fighting battles I was never going to win.  All new missionaries hear that team is hard.  Ya'll, I'm here to say that team is the most rewarding and the most devastating thing I've done.  Some of my very truest and deepest friendships are former teammates. However, I learned that I spent my time and energy trying to change the things (ahem, people) that were entirely beyond my power to change.  I wore myself out and broke myself to pieces trying to please and trying to appease and trying to arrange my life and the people in it according to my preferences.  So much energy wasted on trying to change what was beyond my control instead of trying to change the things I actually had a modicum of authority over in my life.

We had this worksheet at Depression Camp that was a wheel and it was divided up into all the different facets of your life that could influence depression.  Suffice to say I was a mess in just about all of them.  But the first one we talked about, and the one that's stuck with me the longest, was about your home.  The counselor explained that we were designed for paradise.  We were created to dwell in the Garden of Eden, which was an eternal feast for our senses, so our homes should seek to replicate that.

Say what?  I'm a missionary.  It's supposed to be about deprivation and making do and suffering for the Lord, right?

Well, let's just take a little tally of how well that philosophy worked out for me.  I had a little apartment and after a year and a half I had finally gotten it all nice and cozy (especially at Christmas, which may be why I kept my Christmas stuff up for a quarter of the year).  But then, my apartment started to rain down raw sewage and since the lady above me refused to fix the problem that meant I got to move.  2 days before Christmas. Into a bigger apartment.  Which everyone said like it was a good thing.  It had taken me 15 months to finally get my little apartment somewhat homey and now I had to start over with an entirely new, 3 times bigger place (with a couple of rooms that I couldn't use because they were storing the belongings of the Korean teacher who used/still did? live there).  So here's what my Garden of Eden looked like.

1. Hearing - first floor apartment meant that I could hear everyone in the building clomping up and down the concrete stairs.  Also, I lived on a main walking path of our campus, so I could hear vendors walking by hawking their wares throughout the day.  So relaxing.
2. Seeing - Concrete walls that were nigh impossible to hang anything on.  Nothing worked on these walls.  It came with less than stellar curtains.  A friend was looking through pictures on my phone once and said "why did you take a picture of this ugly bathroom?"  So that about sums that up.
3. Smelling - That ugly bathroom?  Also smelly.  There was no bathtub so the shower water just drained down into a grate in the floor which conveniently allowed all sorts of smells to drift on up.  I pressed a kitchen pot lid into duty to try and stem the aroma and lit my biggest, smelliest Bath and Body Works candle whenever I was home and still it was a good idea not to sit downwind of the bathroom.  Which was the entire apartment.
4. Tasting - Ok, this was not too bad because I did have a little control over this and I liked the local food and there were import stores for fun American products. But my fridge, toaster and microwave were in a different room than the sink and stove.  Super convenient.  Plus, it just took so much extra time, energy, money to make things that were familiar.
5. Feeling/Touch - I had one of those ubiquitous IKEA rockers and that was my reading chair.  This country isn't really known for its super plush, comfy furniture.  Also, the apartment came furnished so I didn't get to choose anything except my IKEA chair and bookshelf.  It was OK.  What was not OK?  When the rat fell out of the water heater inches from my face.

So all of that added up to a home that was not in fact a garden of Eden. It was not a place of rest and respite.  It was, in fact, one more place to struggle against.  However, what I didn't realize at the time (and honestly, in all likelihood, it was probably too late in the game for it to have made much of a difference) is that my home was one of the things that I COULD do something about.  Maybe not fix everything, but there were battles that I could fight and actually win in my own home but I spent all that energy trying to change other people's behavior , or even more effective, trying to change the culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations.  That was super productive.

So this is a super long post about the positive effects of taking the time to evaluate whether or not your home is a place of renewal and refreshment for you.  Ok, so it's actually more like a cautionary tale of what happens when you don't do that, but still, you get the picture.  And hopefully soon I'll do some posts about how I've incorporated what I've learned into my life now.

I do want to emphasize that this is one facet of what I learned about my depression.  I'm not saying people fall into clinical depression because they don't have pretty homes.  I am saying that having a restful home was more important to my emotional health than I realized.

These are lyrics from I song I love called "Gentle Arms of Eden" by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer and whenever I hear the song, it reminds me of how we were designed for Eden.

"This is my home.  This is my only home.  This is the only sacred ground that I have ever known. Should I stray in the dark night alone, rock me, God, in the gentle arms of Eden. "

Ok, so the song is actually about evolution and there's this Goddess referenced, so it's not for everybody, but the spirit of the song and most the lyrics (if you just change Goddess to God in your head - or your blog) totally embody what I feel when I think about wanting my temporary home to reflect my eternal home.