Potluck in the Pre-Apocalypse

There was a potluck at the farm Friday in honorof a Spanish apprentice who is leaving next week. There were two long, white-clothed tables set out on a hill overlooking the lettuce beds and it was extremely dark, even through the light of the four tiki torches around the table. I thought it was a really classy setup. I made cornbread! And not just any cornbread. Here's the recipie:

Green Chile Cornbread!

1 box of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix
1 can of creamed corn
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1 can green chiles
about five slices of cheddar cheese
1 packet of taco seasoning

Whisk the Jiffy, egg and milk in a bowl. Add creamed corn. Pour half the batter into a baking dish (I forgot to grease the dish, but that would be a good idea). Tear the cheese into little bits (shredded cheese would be easier, but all I had were slices) and layer on top. Add a layer of green chilies (you don't need to use the entire can. I used 2/3 of it.). Pour the rest of the batter into the dish. Sprinkle with taco seasoning (I used about 1/2 the packet.)

I wanted the spices to be mild, because I didn't want to take away very much from the base cornbread flavor. And alternately, if you just wanted to take all the ingredients and mix them homogeneously into the batter, it would probably be really great. But if I did it that way, I would still put the cheese on as a layer. Hey, I might try it that way next time.

This recipe was modified from a oneI found online that called for twice as many ingredients, but I stripped it down to save money. Plus this way it's vegetarian (no hamburger) and one of the girls here is a vegetarian. Oh, the original recipe suggested serving it with a dab of sour cream on top. Don't you think that'd be awesome?

The dish was cheap and really well received!

In other news, I read The Road this weekend. One of the other apprentices let me borrow it. It's about a man and his son who are just scraping by in a post-apocalyptic world. The two of them walk down a road with a shopping cart full of their stuff. Drearyness ensues. I think it's part of the reason I didn't sleep well last night. I liked it well enough, even though it's repetitive and the first 50 or so pages are tedious. And it's a grammatical headache and there are hardly any dialogue tags.

I'm going to get back to reading Walden today. I need some green to balance some of that corpsy, ashy black and white.

Eat well,

Jason