Love and Chicken Casserole

Today was my day to provide dinner for two families from church.  Since they are both going through hard things and need comfort, I knew just what I was going to make for them: Poppyseed Chicken.

We just had Poppyseed Chicken for Mother's Day.  One of my favorite things about Mother's Day and my birthday is that I don't have to cook;  somebody makes food for me.  

I don't know where I learned the equation that food = love.  Possibly from my mother, who is a fantastic cook and made sure that we came home every day of the week to something delicious cooking.  (Exception: liver day.  My dad liked liver & onions, so I guess making that for him was her way of saying I love you, but the only message I associate with liver is, "Eat it, it's good for you." Blegh.  Since I love my husband and he also hates liver, I demonstrate my love by never cooking it.)

Possibly I learned that food = love by summers spent at my great grandmother's farm.  My grandmother was one of six sisters.  In August, they would all bring their kids to the farm.  In Arkansas.  They would get up at the crack of dawn, start frying bacon and rolling biscuits and tossing flour to lay out a full breakfast spread, clean it up and start frying the chicken for lunch.  By mid-afternoon it was 110 degrees in the kitchen.  That was when they would call us in from where we were playing under the big trees outside and make us sit at the kitchen table shelling peas for dinner because it was "too hot to play outside."

I learned to love food and laughter from my family.  I learned to love to cook, especially to cook for those you love.  I believe in the act of measuring and mixing and crumbling and baking to ensure that when the ones you love come home at the end of the long day, they are greeted with the message, "Everything will be okay.  There is comfort here. There is something warm and gooey."  I know that sometimes we just need to stuff something down and get on with our busy lives, but I believe in the servant act of making a mess of your kitchen, cleaning it up and laying a table that says, "You are loved."  And Southern cooks know how to show the love.

Food brought by Southern Baptist women is a good reason to have surgery, or to have a baby or buy a house.  Especially chicken casseroles.  Chicken Divan.  Chicken and rice.  Chicken Tetrazzini.  Chicken Pot Pie, oh my word.  Hot Chicken Salad.  But the winner, hands down, of the food = love contest in the chicken category is Poppyseed Chicken.  It has everything I find comforting in a dish - creamy sauce, buttery cracker topping.  The only thing missing is cheese.  

We had Poppyseed Chicken from Barbara's Home Cooking for Mother's Day.  I do love their recipe.  But I have a really good one from the Blue Willow Inn in Social Hill GA.  (If you love southern cooking, the Blue Willow Inn is Mecca.  You must go there just to eat.  I did.  I once took a bus trip from Atlanta out to Social Hill with a bunch of other Southern Baptist women.  We chartered a bus for the sole purpose of eating at the Blue Willow. And shopping in their gift shop, of course, which is where I purchased the Blue Willow Inn Bible of Southern Cooking. Yes, that is the title.)  

So this morning I got out my Blue Willow Bible and made my list and went to get all the ingredients and spent the morning making a double batch of Poppyseed Chicken.  I recommend you serve it with Uncle Ben's Long Grain & Wild Rice and green beans.  That's what I packed into containers and delivered this afternoon.  And cantaloupe. 

We are not having Poppyseed Chicken for dinner, since we just had it for lunch on Sunday and leftovers on Monday.  We're having pork chops.  But you might want to make Poppyseed Chicken.  Here's the recipe:

Blue Willow Inn Poppyseed Chicken

8   skinless boneless chicken breasts

10 ounces sour cream (not the fat free kind)

2 10-1/2 ounce cans cream of chicken soup

2 10-1/2 ounce cans cream of mushroom soup

2 sleeves Townhouse crackers

3 sticks butter (NOT margarine)

3 tablespoons poppyseeds

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Boil and cube the chicken.  (Alternately, you can buy a Rotisserie Chicken at the store, skin and debone it.  Whichever you find less work and more delicious.)  I do not cube the chicken.  I pull it apart into shredded chunks.  I like that better.

Combine the sour cream, chicken soup and mushroom soup.  Mix well and add the chicken.  Pour into a greased casserole dish.

In another bowl, melt the butter.  Crumble the crackers (not too finely) into the melted butter and mix gently.  Spread the mixture over the top of the casserole.  Sprinkle with poppy seeds.

Cover with foil (to keep the crackers from burning) and bake for 25 minutes.  (If you are taking this casserole to somebody, stop here.  Write down the rest of the directions for them to complete at home.)  If you are making this for yourself (and why not?), remove the foil and bake another 15-20 minutes or until the chicken mixture bubbles around the edges and the crackers are just golden.

Serves 8-10 normal people (6-8 Worleys)

But Jesus...

This afternoon as the rain pours down, I have been reading Peter's story of good intentions, bold declarations and epic failure.  I am so much like Peter – impulsive, bold to start, often missing the point, so often failing in the critical moment. 

But Jesus….

That's my testimony.  For many years, I thought my story was about what I could do for Christ.  More recently I am acutely aware that my testimony is, "But Jesus…"  Over the last 15 years, as I have struggled with cyclical depression, I have come to love the Greek word for resurrection – anastasis – "to stand again."  Every single day, that is what happens to me.  I would be down in that pit. But Jesus…

This Sunday is Easter, and at our church we begin a new sermon series called "Epic Fail." Next week we will talk about Peter, but this week we must talk about Christ. It is his day. As a Messiah, he was disappointing to most of the people of his time. And, as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ had not been resurrected, he would have been an epic failure. Our faith in him would be useless and we to be pitied.

But Christ has been raised, Paul writes, summing up our hope and our salvation in five explosive words.

But

Christ

has

been

raised...

And then Paul employs an old Hebrew word picture to describe the risen Christ: the firstfruits. The firstfruits were an offering made from the first of your crops that had come in.  The firstfruits were proof that God had kept his promise to provide.  There was new growth, new life, a new crop, the promise of bounty.  The firstfruits offering was a celebration of life.

And Christ has been raised, the firstfruits - the proof that God has kept his promise, that there will be new life, that we will also be raised.

When I was growing up, the preacher always said these words from Romans 6 as he baptized people:  Buried with him by baptism into death, raised to walk in newness of life.

Newness of life is what I need, every day.  Every day I wake up sliding into the pit.  Every day life knocks me down.  But Jesus empowers me to stand again.

It's Easter, and I am depressed. 

But Jesus...

Made like him, like him we rise.  We sing those words every Easter, and when we do, a little chill runs up my spine.  Because one day, we will forever and finally really do it.

There are a lot of people like me who will be in our congregations on Sunday.  I am praying for them as we speak those powerful words that are the Gospel:  But Jesus has been raised.  How different history, and our stories, would be if that were not true.

Gratitude journal

Today, on this gray rainy day, let us be thankful for cheese.  Especially warm melty cheese.

My sister-in-law and I spent the Wednesday before Thanksgiving cooking everything that could be made in advance.  Kim is not a cook, but she is best sous-chef around.  To keep us company as we chopped and prepped and sauted, we watched the Food Network. 

Being the cheese lovers that we are, Kim and I were appalled as we watched one Food Network Star (I shall not give her name) prepare what she called a "Croque Madame."  Any melty-cheese lover will be familiar with the  delectable French open-faced sandwich, the Croque Monsier, which employs three of my favorite ingredients:  good french bread, ham and Gruyere cheese.  There's hardly anything more comforting than a pile of this melted goodness, made even meltier by rich bechamel sauce.  Mmmm.

Kim and stopped chopping and sat in shock as our hapless nameless Food Network Star gaily advised us that we could save lots of money by using "cheaper cheese."  (Which she made up for by adding wine.)  Excuse me?  Cheaper cheese?  No.  Granted, even an average grocery store Gruyere is an investment, especially when used to make what is essentially a grilled cheese sandwhich.  But come on, do the math:  cheaper cheese + wine = you could have afforded the Gruyere.  And when it comes to the Croque Monsier, there is no substitute for the tangy bubbly Gruyere. 

Here is Ina Garten's recipe for a perfectly respectable Croque Monsier, although I would advise you use something other than white sandwich bread (ick), like a few-days-old slice of good sourdough.    (Ina is NOT the offending Food Network Star described above.  We love Ina.)

Today I did not have any ham, but I did have Gruyere and a few slices of sourdough, and I did have two onions and some beef stock, so I am profoundly grateful for the warm comfort of the French Onion soup I made for lunch.  On a day like today, there is hardly anything more gratitude-worthy than buttery browned onions floating in a rich broth topped with bubbling cheese.  And this is my twist on this soup:  I melt Gruyere on the bread and then float those luscious cheese toasts in the soup.  Oh my goodness.  I might have eaten the whole pan of soup, but I ran out of bread!

If your only acquaintance with French Onion Soup is the salad bar at Ruby Tuesdays, you have no idea what I'm talking about.  So do yourself a favor and go to the trouble to make it as Julia Child instructs.  (No shortcuts or cheap cheese, please.)

Soup A L'Oignon

2 thinly sliced sweet yellow onions
2 stick of butter unsalted (don't you think about margarine!)
1 Tbsp oil

Cook the onions slowly (low-med heat) in the butter and oil in a covered saucepan for 15 minutes.

1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar

Uncover, raise heat to med;  stir in salt and sugar.  (The sugar helps the onions to caramelize.)  Cook 30 minutes stirring frequently, uncovered - til the onions have turned golden brown.

1 Tbsp flour

Sprinkle in the flour and stir for 3 minutes.

(Now Julia does not do this next part;  she uses cognac, but I am advising you to use my method.)

1 small clove garlic, minced
1/4 lemon, squeezed
2 Tbsp Worcestershire
1/2 cup dry white wine (do not even talk to me about "cooking wine")
1 large or 2 small bay leaf

Sir these in.  If you like black pepper, as I do, season with coarse ground black pepper.

1 quart beef stock

Add the stock, bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer partially covered for 30 minutes.

I serve this soup in shallow flat soup bowls.  For each serving, cover 2 slices of sourdough bread with shredded Gruyere.  (Pile it on!)  Toast it until cheese is bubbly.  Float those slices in the bowls of soup.

Give thanks!  And send me your favorite melty cheese recipe.

I heard the bells

It's officially Christmas season, time for Christmas carols. Ah.

My favorite Christmas carol is "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem on Christmas Day in 1864, when America was torn apart by civil war. The hymn version usually includes these stanzas of the poem:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.


And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.


Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.


And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”


Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Those last two stanzas resonate with me. I am often a country divided, caught in a war between God's truth and Satan's lies. I bow my head and give up on peace far too often. 

Somebody sent me this bell today in an email. It was just what I needed to fight the war within today.

I KNOW WHO I AM

I am God's child ( John 1:12)

I am Christ 's friend ( John 15:15 )

I am united with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17)

I am bought with a price (1 Cor 6:19-20)

I am a saint (set apart for God). (Eph. 1:1)

I am a personal witness of Christ . (Acts 1:8)

I am the salt & light of the earth (Matt 5:13-14)

I am a member of the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27)

I am free forever from condemnation ( Rom. 8: 1-2)

I am a citizen of Heaven. I am significant ( Phil 3 :20)

I am free from any charge against me (Rom. 8:31 -34)

I am a minister of reconciliation for God (2 Cor 5:17-21)

I have access to God through the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:18)

I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Eph. 2:6)

I cannot be separated from the love of God (Rom 8:35-39)

I am established, anointed, sealed by God (2 Cor 1:21-22 )

I am assured all things work together for good (Rom. 8:28 )

I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit ( John 15:16 )

I may approach God with freedom and confidence (Eph.. 3: 12 )

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil. 4:13 )

I am the branch of the true vine, a channel of His life ( John 15: 1-5)

I am God's temple (1 Cor. 3: 16). I am complete in Christ (Col. 2: 10)

I am hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).. I have been justified (Romans 5:1)

I am God's co-worker (1 Cor. 3:9; 2 Cor 6:1). I am God's workmanship (Eph. 2:10)

I am confident that the good works God has begun in me will be perfected. (Phil. 1: 5)

I have been redeemed and forgiven ( Col 1:14). I have been adopted as God's child (Eph 1:5)

I belong to God

Do you know

Who you are?

 Just in case you needed to hear the ring of truth today, I thought I'd pass it along.  Peace on earth.  And in your heart. 

Gratitude journal

I've made a breakthrough this week. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I find myself grateful for the color orange.

Orange: never liked it. It's the color of traffic cones. And, well, UT, whose fans are over-the-top All About Orange. I'm from Texas; there is only one UT, and its orange is not as obnoxious.

I like orange juice. But that's about all I can say for orange.

My hostile relationship with orange is born out of adolescent trauma. I blame it on my mother. (Isn't your mother responsible for all your deepest problems?) My mother made all my clothes when I was growing up. I viewed this as a serious social handicap. Everyone who has ever been 13 knows that the number one rule is to Blend In. Your jeans need to be exactly like everyone else's jeans. Your skirts need to have come from the same store and bear the same label. Mine didn't have labels. I was a tall gawky girl, and it didn't help me at all that my mother sewed rick-rack along the hems of my dresses to extend their wear as I grew.

When I was 12 or 13, my uncle got married. My aunt is only about 7 years older than me. My little brother and my cousins are 5 years younger than me. So who do you think I wanted to hang with? My 19-year-old aunt-to-be was the definition of cool to me.

For the wedding, my mother made me a very orange a-line dress with an orange bow for my hair and orange window-pane stockings. (It was the 60's.) Amid the fluff of pale pink chiffoned college girls that were the bridesmaids, I stuck out like a very inflamed sore thumb. I will never forget the excrutiating moment when my family pushed me out there into that pink cloud of Barbies to catch the bouquet. I nearly caught it. There's a terrible picture of me somewhere in a wedding album, all arms and legs, a startled orange ugly duckling among a sea of swans.

Since then, me and orange been on bad terms.

But this fall, how can you resist? Every day I walk through my neighborhood, ablaze with leaves and sunlight and mums and pumpkins. Yards that were verdant a month ago are now piled high with the flaming fiery offering of fall. It's like the trees are wildly happy and proud that God has dressed them so gloriously. So yesterday I lay on my patio and looked up into the trees and gave my heart back to orange.

Not that I'll be wearing it, mind you.

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you,and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. ...This will be for the LORD's renown. - Isaiah 55.12-13

Beautiful rain

It's raining outside as I am writing this. The weather has changed, and as I sit by my window writing, there is nothing but the sound of a beautiful rain.

I was thinking of two other times that I heard a beautiful rain. I've been thinking of these two memories because of the rain and because in my Wednesday Bible study, we have been learning how to read the Psalms. The Psalms are the hymnbook of Israel, the common prayer book. So many of the psalms are meant to be sung, not read. It completely changes the experience when you sing a psalm.

Several years ago, I was in Myanmar to visit a friend.  Ash had made friends with a group of Burmese monks!  (There is a large university for monks in that city.)  There are so many reasons why that friendship was improbably and most definitely orchestrated by God. The monks were meeting with her to study the Bible and practice their English.  When she told them that her teacher was coming to visit, they insisted that they must meet me, so one afternoon we visited them at the university.  It was pouring down rain and we sat on the terrace of their dormitory.  They told me they had just been reading the Psalms.  They had memorized Psalm 42.  One monk proudly recited it to me.  I asked him if he knew that many of the psalms were songs, that they were intended to be sung.  He asked me to sing one, so I sang Psalm 42, to the early American hymn tune "The Water is Wide."  I will never forget how completely silent the entire building went.  All the monks stopped their activities and listened.  There was just the sound of the rain, and the notes of the psalm hanging in the air like droplets. And, I believe if longing could have a sound, we would have heard it.

Longing is what the psalms so beautifully express, especially the laments. We don't really have a lot of contemporary Christian laments in American church services these days, but I know where they can be found.

Our church has a partnership with Living Hope, a ministry in Cape Town, South Africa, led by John and Avril Thomas.  Most of the work they do is with AIDS education/treatment and with rehabilitation/job training for displaced black South Africans.  However, they told us a surprising discovery they'd made:  There are lots of musicians and songwriters in the area, and Living Hope runs a Christian radio station.  They want to support and develop the indigenous Christian music community, but they need help to teach these musicians and then record them.  I will never forget when Avril Thomas leaned across the lunch table and said to Dennis, "What we need is some professional singers, songwriters, producers and engineers. Do you know any?" Do we ever!  So every few years, we take a team of them to South Africa to lead a weekend music conference.  We have classes for singers, songwriters, instrumentalists, worship leaders, sound engineers—you name it.  

At one conference, I was teaching a three-part session for songwriters called Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs.  In the first session, we studied the Psalms.  We talked about the different kinds of  psalms, including laments.  John and Avril had told us that one of the problems they felt the local musicians had was that they were trying to recreate American-style worship choruses, rather than write music more true to South Africa.  So I challenged them:  What could South African songwriters contribute to the body of worship for the church all over the world?  The Psalmists wrote and prayed out of their own experiences.  

"What are your experiences?" I asked.  "What do you deal with?"

A long list came:  poverty, injustice, oppression, discrimination, fear, powerlessness, hopelessness, hunger, sickness, war.  

I suggested that they might be uniquely qualified to write laments.  

The next afternoon, my fellow team member Joyce and I were conducting one-on-one critique sessions. It had been a long afternoon; Joyce and I were tired. It had just begun to pour down rain outside when a young man walked in with his guitar and sat down.  His name was Nelson Buhe.  He was a refugee from the Congo.  His entire village had been destroyed by rebel soldiers.  His father and brothers had been killed.  Nelson had escaped.  He was very soft spoken.  He said that he had been in my class and had written a lament.  I invited him to sing it for us.

Rain. Silence. And then, something I will never forget.

Nelson closed his eyes, began strumming his guitar and then threw back his head and poured out his heart. In Swahili, he mourned, "Where is God in Africa?"  "Jesus Christ, reign in Africa!"  

Joyce and I were speechless. 

Nelson sang his song in the closing concert of the conference, and his fellow Africans wept.  A floodgate was opened and the prayers for Africa poured out.  Oh, the power of lamenting, when your heart breaks for the the things that break the heart of God!  I believe there are believers around the world who could teach the church today how to lament. And in these day, we need to know how.

I am thinking of those brothers and sisters tonight as I listen to the rain.

Rain, rain, rain,
beautiful rain.
Oh, come. Never come.
Oh, come. Never come.
Oh, come to me,
beautiful rain.

- Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Gratitude journal

This week I am grateful for many things, but especially for this little boy, Elliott Benjamin Worley, who celebrated his 4th birthday in the backyard yesterday.

It was a pumpkin super-hero party. All the super-heroes were there, including this guy:

And these friends:

Here's some of the fun:

Happy Birthday E! You're a true super-hero.

Love, Lala