Mystery and Hatch Green Chile

“Food is a gift of God given to all creatures for the purposes of life’s nurture, sharing and celebration. When it is done in the name of God,
eating is the earthly realization of God’s eternal communion-building love.”

from Food and Faith
by Norman Wirzba

Nicole spent the 1990s working on guest ranches in southern Colorado, and much of those years were spent in the kitchen. It was there that this Chicago girl was introduced not simply to the life-altering world of green chiles, but specifically to the “Hatch” – a legendary New Mexican chile with a fanatical following. She discovered that there is no best Hatch recipe, only a relentless store house of best recipes. There’s not even agreement on what to call many of the most sought-after Hatch dishes – is it Hatch green chile soup? Hatch green chile stew? Hatch green chile sauce? The world of Hatch chiles is a never-ending mystery, too deep and wide to fully experience, one filled with never ending delight and discovery.

With Hatch chiles, we are learning that in growing food, preparing food, and cooking food, we participate in a mystery we didn’t create, a world of variety too big for us to control or fully experience. But we are invited and permitted to experiment, contribute, and discover. We are welcomed by God as co-creators.

Ingredients (serves 4)

2-3 Tablespoons of oil for sautéing vegetables
1 large onion, chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons chipotle chili powder (or regular chili powder)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon dried oregano
Salt to taste
1 lb fresh tomatillos, chopped (or 1 cup canned tomatillos or diced tomatoes)
4 green chiles, roasted, seeded and chopped (Hatch, Anaheim, or 4 oz. can)
1 large bunch of fresh cilantro, stems chopped separately from leaves
2-3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 Tablespoons lime juice (fresh is preferred but not required)

Either:
2 cans of white or pinto beans, drained and rinsed
Or
1 lb of pork tenderloin, cut for stew

Instructions

• If you’re making the pork version, begin by searing the tenderloin pieces in 1 Tablespoon of the oil. Just brown lightly. No need to cook it through. Then set it aside. If you’re doing the vegetarian version, just begin with the next step.

• In a large pot, over medium heat, cook the oil, onions, celery and garlic until tender. About five minutes.

• Add the spices: chili powder, cumin, oregano and salt. Stir together about 1 minute.

• Add tomatillos (or tomatoes), cilantro stems, and green chile. Reduce heat and stir to combine.

• Add the 2-3 cups of stock (you choose how thick or soupy you’d like it).

• Add your beans at this point, if you’re going vegetarian. Or add the seared pork to the mix.

• Simmer for 20 minutes or until the pork is cooked and tender.

• Add the cilantro leaves and cook another 5-10 minutes.

• Add the lime juice, taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

• Serve! We love it with plantain chips. But rice and pan-fried corn tortillas go well too.

It Takes Time: Yogurt and a new year

“When we come to the Table in Communion
we are called to take time to be together….
It takes time:
time to serve the elements of The Meal, time to stand in line, time to think and pray, time to prepare to eat together, and time to remember how we got there.”

from Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal
by Milton Brasher-Cunningham

Of course, the holiday season just past is supposed to be about this taking slow time together. I’m sure it works that way for you, but we haven’t mastered the trick yet. Despite our detailed planning this Advent, and careful simplifying of life — we still found ourselves coming to the end of 2014 rushing to get everything in. Rushing to be fully present to everything. Rushing to slow down.

Communion the first Sunday of the new year is a brilliant idea. It gave me a place to take all the ways I failed to pay attention, listen, be still — and start over right there.

“Grain of the field, fruit of the vine” — a homemade granola eucharist to go with homemade yogurt

Making my own yogurt is another act I can take to reset myself. While it’s not exactly convenient, it is very easy. It just requires attention to a few details and then several hours of waiting.

Why in the world would you want to make your own yogurt? For one, it’s a lot less expensive. You can make two quarts of organic plain yogurt for the same price you’d pay for one quart of non-organic. But more than that, the process of making yogurt — whisking a pot of creamy liquid, smelling milky steam, testing the temperature along the way — is remarkably soothing if you are willing to slow down and give it your full attention. And eating the yogurt we’ve made ourselves has nourished us first thing in the morning with a lot of joy.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 gallon of 2% milk
1/2 cup of plain (unflavored) yogurt

INSTRUCTIONS

Over a medium high burner, heat the 1/2 gallon of milk in a heavy pot until it’s about 190 degrees (or just shy of boiling), stirring occasionally to prevent it from scalding on the bottom. This can take 20-25 minutes, depending on the shape of your pot.

Let it cool to about 110 degrees (to speed the process, you can set the pot in a sink half full of cold water and ice packs). If a skin forms on top, just skim it off.

When the milk is at 110 degrees, dip out a 1 cup and mix in the 1/2 cup of plain yogurt. Whisk together, then pour the mixture into the warm milk and stir.

Pour the warm milk into two 1 quart containers (wide mouth mason jars work well, as do plastic container with good lids), cover and then set in a picnic cooler packed around with dish towels. Drop in a heating pad turned to its lowest setting. Let it go for at least 4 hours, but up to 24 hours is just fine. The longer it sits, the more probiotic-y (and the more tart) the finished yogurt.

Alternately, place the full pot of warmed milk, covered, in an oven pre-warmed to 200 degrees. Turn the oven off and keep the door closed for 4 to 24 hours.

Remove from the warmth and refrigerate until ready to eat. Sweeten each serving with honey and a bit of vanilla extract, or add fresh fruit or fruit preserves.

*NOTE: The healthy bacteria that turns milk into yogurt flourish in an environment that stays a temperature between 98-115 degrees. Heating the milk to near boiling first kills off any undesirable bacteria, then the good probiotics are added when the temperature is friendly to their growth. A cooler “culturing” temperature just means the yogurt will thicken more slowly. A warmer temperature may kill the probiotics altogether and just leave you with hot milk.

Making yogurt is a gentle, forgiving process. And who doesn’t need that in January?

Kitchen Interrupted

 Paul and I just took these two out of the oven. The Fort Collins house smells like apple crumb and peach strawberry wrapped up in butter pastry. They are for an all-church gathering tonight, a dessert potluck followed by a town hall-style meeting where the congregation will get to practice listening and talking honestly about hard stuff. They’ll probably need patience and maybe even some of the forgiveness we’ve been talking about all through Lent.

I’ve been feeling a little bit like this these days — surrounded by so much sweetness on so many levels, while doing some sticky, risky inner business. Turns out no one can put pressure on me like I can put on myself. Turns out, left to my own devices, I will cower before the inner voice demanding I immediately become THE perfect

studentwifehomesteadermentorpedestrianhousekeeperdriverneighborfriendfamilymermeberchristianperson.

Turns out, trying to keep up with all the requirements I put on myself is really exhausting. Yet it is also highly addictive, so about the time I think I’ve “given up” trying to keep my own life under control, I find another area that needs just a little bit of fixing. Then another. And another. Until I’m flattened and overwhelmed, angry and ashamed.

Hence the sticky, risky inner business: deep breath, honest assessment, good cry, grace and good humor. Begin again.

Homemade sweets and challenging conversations. Beautiful life and inner crud. Just more of the fits and starts of this season. The mountain weather plays along, dropping snow one day and warming up to 65 sunny degrees the next. The only way to go forward is to commit to the transition, the ups and downs. The only way through is to welcome the mud.

And then there’s our house in Westcliffe, still its own glorious mess, still in the process of being reclaimed as Home. The last few days we spent down there, we crossed the point of no return in the kitchen. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but we’re committed to finding out!

Take a peek: 

How about you? What are the contrasts in your life these days? Where is Spring breaking in, all messy and pretty?

 

Comfort Food: Vegetarian Enchilada Pie

Tuesday morning, I was supposed to meet with some brand new friends and tell stories. Instead, I woke up with a raging sore throat and an aching body. I stayed in bed most of the next three days, reading a little. Sleeping mostly. Paul was amazing in keeping his vow about “in sickness,” bringing me saltines and vitamin c and orange juice before heading into full days, crammed with meetings and conversations and building new relationships with the church here.

Meanwhile, news of the flood damage keeps flooding in as waters recede. People around here are turning their attention from rescue to rebuilding.

Flu and floods…

Coming out of my own deluge of post-nasal drip, I was hankering for comfort food tonight. I’m Molly-Make-Do when it comes to cooking, so I looked at the left over lentils, the stack of corn tortillas, the lone zucchini squash… and came up with this (Inspired by the Lentil Meatball idea from Sprouted Kitchen):

Vegetarian Enchilada Pie (for two)

• 2 cups cooked brown lentils
• 1/3 cup of salsa
• 1 Tblsp Olive oil
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 2 cloves of garlic, diced
• 1 Tblsp Chili powder
• 1/2 tspn Cumin
• Salt to taste
• 16 oz of prepared Enchilada sauce (I used locally crafted Roberto’s Vegetarian Burrito Sauce)
• 9 white corn tortillas
• 3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
• 1 cup diced tomatoes with green chili
• chopped cilantro (for garnish)

Grease a 6×9 deep dish casserole pan

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

Lentil-smash: It’s what’s for dinner.

Put lentils and salsa in a food processor and pulse until paste-y.

In a saute pan, heat Olive oil on medium low and add chopped onions. Saute until just translucent. Add mashed lentils, diced garlic, chili powder, cumin and salt until heated through. Turn off heat and set aside.

In 6×9 pan, pour 1/3 of Enchilada sauce

Cover with three corn tortillas, spread 1/2 of seasoned lentils over tortillas.

Layering is important in the changeable Colorado weather

Layer half of the slices of zucchini over lentils. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of shredded cheese over zucchini. Pour 1/3 of Enchilada sauce over cheese.

Repeat with three more tortillas, last half of lentils, remaining zucchini slices, another 1/4 cup of cheese and final third of Enchilada sauce.

Layer three more corn tortillas on top and cover with cup of diced tomatoes with green chili and last 1/4 cup of cheese.

Bake covered with foil for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake another 10 minutes. Let set about 5 minutes before serving.

Comfort Food: Vegetarian Enchilada Pie!

This little low-fat, protein packed dinner was totally improvised. And now it’s just another good reason to make lentils and have fun Tex-Mex sauces around!

Shout Out! to Fort Collins local biz, Roberto’s Salsa’s and Sauces

Hubris and Humility

The word around these parts is “rebuild.”  And it’s inspiring, much of the time.  People who have made their homes in high mountain canyons, because they have sought refuge, solitude, and a taste of freedom – they’re not going to let anyone take that dream away from them.  And even though this kind of disaster isn’t supposed to come around very often, they’ll spit into the wind and try it again.

Here’s what troubles me, though.  There are over 200 miles of roads in these Rocky Mountains that were actually damaged to the point that they cannot be used, or absolutely swept away, along with millions of tons of rock and gravel and reinforced concrete that lay under them.  There are some 150 bridges, I’ve heard unofficially, that will have to be rebuilt.  These were built based upon what was learned from the last horrible floods of 1976, when a flash flood shot down the Big Thompson Canyon and killed a lot of people in a very short, few minutes.  The bridges, roads, and the support underneath these roads were all, or most, built with the Big Thompson flood clearly in view.  They were built to withstand another Big Thompson flood.  And I have some sense that they might have been able to do just that.  Only this flood was bigger.  It was not expected that there would be another flood bigger than the one in 1976 for at least 100 years, when bridges are in need of replacement, I guess.  So, they built these to withstand anything shy of the 1976 tragedy.  But people are calling this flood a “1000 year flood.”

What troubles me is that when I talk to engineers about whether there is a limit to what engineering can do, whether there might be storms that NO AMOUNT OF ENGINEERING and construction might be able to withstand, I am not getting any answers.  It’s almost as if those of us molded by Modernity have so ingrained in us the illusion that the human being is the center of the universe, and that our right and ability is to bring creation to heel, and that we will always find a solution no matter what the problem, that we will always triumph in the end. . . we are so infected by this disease that when, a mere 37 years after what people called the most horrible flood in western history, and after the very best science knew to do to protect that same strip of turf from it ever happening again, the roads and man-made walls were torn and tossed away like beach toys, we assume there is no limit to what we can control and overcome.

What I wish I was hearing is a good dose of humility and honesty.  We may have to build bridges that we cannot guarantee beyond certain limits of creation forces.  We may not be able to afford 150 top of the line, state of the art bridges that might survive a next catastrophe at the cost of billions of dollars; and they might not. We obviously have no clue when the next one will take place. I think everyone’s too afraid to say it out loud, because it goes against the way we’ve been taught to respond to catastrophes.  That is, “We’re in control!  We’ll get it right the next time.”  And that’s why much of the finger pointing at global warming as the real culprit in all of this alarms me, too.  This may indeed be related to the usage of fossil fuels, and we may have the ability to put a dent in how that is impacting the globe.  But the frightening thing to me is that that very  drive feeds in all of us the same lie that we have far more control than we actually do.

Hubris is a dangerous thing in all of us.  We think more highly of ourselves than we ought.  After I hear too much of that attitude, I seek out a meeting I attend regularly around here where the issue is the mess they have made of their lives because of pride, and the answer is the currency of humility by which they have seen their lives returned to happiness, joy and freedom.

Right-Sized

When I arrived in Austin, Texas, 26 and 1/2 months ago, the state was in the worst drought since the early 50’s, and certainly the first one that involved the staggering (and burgeoning) population of Texas today.  Austinites apologized profusely for the horrible conditions, telling me that it was far worse than most of them had ever seen – in hopes, I suspect, that I would love Austin in spite of the drought.  One thing I remember from that summer was one rain shower that fell in late July 2011, lasting perhaps 5 minutes.  I did not see another drop of rain until the blessing of a rain pulse coming through in mid September, I believe.  Another thing I remember from that summer was that I was powerless to change the weather, as we suffered through 90 days with temperatures over 100 degrees.

Fast forward to this last week.   When Nicole and I arrived here in Fort Collins, CO on Labor Day, the state had had some relief from drought with some timely thunderstorms and systems this summer.  But everyone nonetheless spoke of the drought cycle that the state has been in for years now, and how concerned people are about the need for timely rains and snowpack this coming winter.  On Monday, we became aware that the 95 degree days were about to shift, as rain came into the picture.  The forecast was for a full week of clouds and rain, pulsing through the days and nights.  And they were exactly right – only no one seemed to grasp the volume of rain that would come down.  It was (and still is) breathtaking, especially for Central Texans who have often gone to bed in the last 2 years, pleading for rainstorms to put us to sleep.  At this point, the calculation is that the amount of rain that has come down, if it had been in inches of snow, would be the equivalent of over 12 feet of snow.  Today the flooding is so severe that no one can drive from Fort Collins to Denver.  Every bridge between here and there is compromised.  It is, as they are saying, a “100 year flood.”

 

Two opposite experiences, totally contradictory.  Except for one thing – in both situations, we experience our utter powerlessness.

One of the great truths which Nicole and I sit with this day is the step which begins each of our days – to admit our powerlessness to do almost anything we pretended all our lives that we had within our power.  Drought and floods remind us that we are not God, and that we are grateful – not only that such things require a wisdom and intelligence and power far beyond ours to be able to manage or direct or redeem – but also that we are relieved from the horrible pressure of trying to control or cure, or feeling the responsibility that we have caused most of what occupies our world.  We are given a reprieve today from playing God, and it is the greatest lesson from creation that I can imagine.

And so, though I have no power whatsoever to cause this to happen, I will pray that God will give Central Texas, indeed, all of Texas, the refreshment of the rains that it needs.

Moving In

So. We’ve just completed our big move. Since I’d begun packing up my apartment in late June, it seems we have been swimming in boxes. What I had proudly been thinking of as our “simple” households turned out to be physically and emotionally exhausting to combine, load, haul, unload, unpack and organize.

The final push to put away the few clothes, books, files and pie-making tools we brought to the already-furnished home we’re renting in Fort Collins turned out to almost be my undoing. We were at the end of our energy and sick-to-death of boxes. Where had all of this stuff come from anyway? When we took a break to go get our new coffee grinder, I walked into a store full of housewares and immediately felt sick to my stomach. All I could see on the shelves were thousands of things that someday – somewhere — would have to be moved.

Moving is exciting. I love the sense of starting fresh, discovering new places, opening up to new possibilities. But my worst moments in this move have come when there was so much movement I couldn’t take it in and I couldn’t make it stop. When my patience had worn thin and there was still a bedlam of clothes lying around, when too many boxes were labeled “misc.” and had to be dragged between rooms, what I wanted more than anything was some safe, stable corner of predictability and sameness. I ached for simplicity and stillness.

Decades ago, an artist neighbor told me, “you gotta have a good chaos going before any order can grow out of it.” Our chaos of bubble wrap and strapping tape crested and gave way to new organized cupboards and closets. I can find the cinnamon and that pair of hand-knit socks again. But I will never be able to stop change, never control the pace of loss or gain. Everything moves and keeps moving.

Still.

I believe simplicity is possible anyway. I believe sustained stability can unroll from the inside out.

And now that all our things are unpacked, I want to give my full attention to unpacking the truth about living a quiet life. I want to move so deep into simplicity of soul that I never have to load up and move again, no matter how many times my address may change.