Grant us, Lord, a grocery store

As a child, one of my favorite games was "pioneers." Inspired by the Little House books, I spent hours pretending that I had packed my wagon, left loved ones behind, and ventured into the wilderness. This was an apt game for an American child, for as soon I was eighteen, I began to measure success in the number of miles I had travelled from home. I had plenty of good stories to help me wander, plenty of epics and novels and allegories to tell me that moving is best, exile is ideal.

I don't want to dismiss the years in which "home" was a complicated, and at times nearly hopeless, concept for me. Part of living the Way of Christ is knowing that we are "sojourners and exiles" in this world (1 Peter 2:11). At the same time, when God's people were living in exile in Babylon, the Word of the Lord came through the prophet Jeremiah, saying "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:28).

As I wrote yesterday, I am living, for the first time in memory, without the feeling that I will soon be moving on. Perhaps (not certainly, but perhaps) this will be home for the rest of my life on earth. As I try to understand what that means, the words of Jeremiah provide some hopeful clues. "Carry on," the prophet tells me. "Wager that you will have time for your seeds to sprout. Know your neighbors. Pray for the prosperity of this place."

Today, praying for the prosperity of this place means praying for a grocery store. When I imagine a prosperous community, I imagine a self-sufficient place, where people have access to the goods and services they need, and where they directly contribute to the welfare of one another by using those goods and services. One reason I moved to this community was its potential for that kind of self-sufficiency. The city is laid out in a way that makes walking and cycling easy, and from my house, I can reach a school, two churches, and three gas stations by walking for about 5 minutes. Walk a little longer--or bike--and I can easily reach a post office, general store, bank, and pharmacy.

By unidentified (unidentified) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

At the same time, there are many vacant buildings in Chickasaw that point to a time when more businesses could thrive in a small town. The hardware store is still in business, but most of their wares are dusty and faded, as though the inventory hasn't moved for years. Many more are simply empty. I pray for these buildings each time I walk, ride, or drive by. I want little local businesses, affordable and intimate, to thrive here. I want a proper grocery store, with a good selection of produce and all the basic dry goods.  I am praying that some entrepreneur will move into town and set up shop. I keep trying to think of un or under-employed friends who might be up to the challenge. For my own purposes, having a grocery store would mean I could do nearly all my shopping within Chickasaw itself.

At the same time, when I ask God for a grocery store, I am doing more than praying for a more convenient errand route. I am begging food for the roots I am trying to put down here. I am praying for a place where I can see my neighbors, know their children, ask about their lives. In other words, when I pray for a grocery store, I am praying for God's kingdom to come in Chickasaw as it is in heaven.

I've never had much patience for middle ground: either I am painting my dreams with universal strokes, abiding in enormous ideals, or I am nesting in small spaces, building little altars in the grass outside my door. Trying to pray for a national economy or a multi-national peace plan overwhelms me, frustrates me with particulars and logistics and obstacles. Only among the stars or down with the grass-roots do my hands feel free to pray and build. And so today I pray:

Grant us, Lord, a grocery store.

Where I know who grows my food

(Day 14 of Lent)

The Young Adult's Guide to an Awesome Thanksgiving

(compiled from four years of wonderful Waco celebrations)

My nook, Thanksgiving 2006

1. Stay where you are. If home is a place we go for holidays, be intentional about celebrating in the place where you live, work, or study.  Celebrations are one way to consecrate a place as home.

2. Be extravagant with your cooking. Buy the best and finest food, and prepare it with care and courage.

3. Invite anyone you can think of who might be alone or lonely. 

Thanksgiving 2011 Photo by Kt



4. Let the kitchen fill up with food and people and merry chaos.

Thanksgiving 2009

5. Serve sweet tea and tamales along with the turkey and dressing.

4. Try to celebrate with an equal number of family members and friends. Introduce your teenage cousins to your grad-school colleagues.  Recognize that the highest bonds of kinship are far above blood, nationality, or common interest.

5. Sing your prayer before eating. "For the Beauty of the Earth" makes a perfect Thanksgiving blessing. Don't be afraid to demand all four verses. 

Thanksgiving 2011 Photo by Kt

6. Go for a long walk after feasting and lingering at the table. Point out beautiful doors and interesting trees in the neighborhood. Say, "Happy Thanksgiving!" to everyone you see.

7. Try all the pies.

 Photo by Stephanie Harris Trevor

8. Give thanks for all the Thanksgivings past. Remember what it was like to sit at the kids' table. Try to name the songs Casey played when he came up from Ft. Hood for Thanksgiving in 2008.  Let Grant and Jenn know how much you appreciated being rescued from a solitary Thanksgiving last year. Laugh at the way Jon never let your wine glass go empty during that first holiday with friends.

Room for more, 2011. Photo by Kt

9. Let yourself be sad for all the miles, years, or hard conversations separating your from people you love. Cry a little if you must, but then imagine that your table is growing longer and longer, and that by the time dessert is served, every seat will be filled with some faraway friend.

10. Write letters to people you are thankful for. Name specific reasons you give thanks to God for them.

Thanksgiving 2008

11. Rest. Don't be ashamed to drift off to sleep as the room fills with low conversations or the buzz of a football game.

12. Don't fret about how or where or with whom you will celebrate next year.  Give thanks for the hope that God will bring you to some glad table, whether as host, guest, daughter, or friend.

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving 2008 My strangely pinched smile does not do justice to my very real joy at this meal.

Another Thanksgiving, another weird smile. The grad students, Thanksgiving 2011.

Thanksgiving 2011. All is well.

How did you celebrate Thanksgiving this year?

More with Less in the Kitchen

As a college senior,
I seem a little startled to have pulled
this Cornish hen from the oven. I actually
had to call the 1-800 number on the hen's
wrapper to find out how to cook it. 

For most of my childhood, I was banned from the kitchen. Determined to create "original" food, I refused to follow recipes, and while my seven-year-old self was quite happy with my "Alien Cake"  (a pinkish-gray combination of Kix cereal, peanut butter, strawberry NesQuik) and similar concoctions, my mother deemed these experiments wasteful. She told me I was not allowed to cook until I was willing to submit to a recipe, so for the next several years I stayed away from the kitchen.  My premature desire to invent foods eventually faded, but even in college cooking was something of a novelty for me.  I was always so pleased and proud of myself when I cooked anything that I would make my roommate take a picture as proof of my success.

Gazing with loving pride
at a fruit-and-yogurt Bundt cake

Knowing my sketchy culinary background, you might appreciate how ironic it is that after my last post  I received many requests for ideas about planning meals to correspond with my grocery-shopping values.
My marvelous friend Kt, among others, asked for some ideas regarding what to do with all the wise, thoughtful food we buy once it is in the kitchen.

As I reflect on the ways I plan my meals, I realize that I usually make my cooking choices based on the following values. Ideally, a meal will fulfill at least four of these criteria:

Meals should be nutritious 

Meals should build on my staples

Meals should follow the seasons 

Meals should be convenient

Meals should teach me

Meals should be nutritious

I still have much to learn about nutrition, but I do try to create meals provide good sources of protein, usually in the form of a grain plus a legume or dairy product. Less often, the protein comes from eggs or meat. Then I add vegetables. I tend to use broccoli, bell peppers, tomatoes, and leafy greens quite a lot.

Meals should build on my staples

One advantage to using More with Less as my core cookbook is that I have many good recipes for the basic staple goods the cookbook recommends. This means that I can plan a meal by checking my cupboard, picking one of my staples, and going from there. If I'm in the mood for rice, I might pair it with a green vegetable curry. If I want something less time-intensive, I'll simply cook the rice with red beans, butter and salt for a tasty and simple meal. If I have a loaf of bread in the kitchen, I can make a light lunch by drizzling the bread with olive oil, topping it with salad greens and parmesan, and then toasting it in the oven.  If I am cooking for others, I know how to turn stale bread into a basic souflée. Lentils can be baked with honey and a bit of bacon in the dutch oven, or turned into a soup.  Having at least four or five meals based on each of your staple dry goods ensures that you have an array of options when it comes time to plan a meal.

As a corollary to this value, I also try to cook meals that use up what I already have in the kitchen. I consider it a victory if I can prepare a meal without any last-minute trips to the grocery store.  Yesterday, for example, I decided to make a rice and lentil dish called kichiri. The recipe called for potatoes and cauliflower, but since I didn't have either, I used canned chickpeas instead of potatoes and the last of the salad greens instead of cauliflower.

Meals should follow the seasons 

Following the seasons can be a challenge, especially if you live in a place where fresh food is only available during the summer.  However, with a little research you can find out what foods are growing in your area, and many grocery stores and farmers' markets will suggest recipes for in-season foods (click here for a really cool "peak-season" food map, with recipes and tips for each food listed).  I love the sense of rhythm and reward that comes with eating in season. Enjoying high-summer tomatoes, autumn squash, and winter greens helps me pay attention to all the beautiful changes that come with each season. 

As an added resource, the publishers of More with Less have released a book about seasonal cooking, Simply in Season. Sadly it is not yet part of my library.

Meals should be convenient

While I do love to cook, I don't love it enough to spend hours each day in the kitchen.  I tend to prefer straight-forward, unfussy meals, and I have little patience for dishes that collapse, explode, or scorch if I try to step away from the stove. Certainly, I have tended pots of buttery risotto, made pâte à choux from scratch, lured boiling vats of caramel into submission, and topped pies with homemade whipped cream, but I only cook like that for special occasions.  Everyday meals should require one or two pots and minimal preparation. Thus, I cook many of my favorite meals in my life-saving Crock Pot (this blog features a whole year's worth of slow-cooker recipes). In the winter I make several soups each week, and I like to freeze portion-sized containers of soup for easy meals at the office or on busy days.

Meals should teach me

Ever a student, I enjoy learning as I cook. Sometimes this means learning about the places where "Groundnut Stew" or kichiri are "daily bread." Good little Baptist girl that I am, I have always enjoyed learning about different cultures and countries through food.

At other times, I will plan meals that teach me a new skill. For example, I love soup, and so I often will try a new soup recipe if I think it will teach me a new secret for making good broth.  In the same way, because baking bread has become an important part of my homemaking, I often plan meals around a new kind of bread I wish to learn how to make.

The meal I cooked last night gives a good idea of how these principles can come together. Peaches were in season and on sale at the grocery store, and I bought some because I've wanted to learn how to make fruit chutneys for a long time.  However, since chutney doesn't really work as a main dish, I used my Extending the Table cookbook to find an Indian entree that called for ingredients I already had. Kichiri is a kind of stew using rice and lentils, and I have plenty of both. Add flat bread to go with the chutney, and my meal was complete!

These values will evolve as my home and circumstances continue to change, but for now they provide me with a flexible structure for planning, cooking, and learning.

What values or criteria do you use for meal-planning? What are some "musts" for the meals you make?