Notice I did not say "crackpot" chicken. *chuckle*
This recipe is adapted from one I saw online and then fiddled with, as I always do. Feel free to fiddle yourself as well.... This version came out absolutely delicious.

CREAMY SOUTHWESTERN CROCKPOT CHICKEN
5-8 pieces of chicken -- can be frozen, can be bone-in our boneless, skin or not, whatever. Use what you've got
Cooking spray OR oil (I used 1T of the oil from a jar of sundried tomatoes -- yum!)
Minced garlic
Optional: chopped onion
Marinade of your choice (see my below)
1 can corn (mine was Green Giant & had bits of chiles in it)
1 can black beans
1 can Rotel or other mexican diced tomatoes OR 2 cups of salsa
1 container Philadeliphia Cooking Cream in the Southwestern/Mexican flavor
Some sour cream if needed
Egg noodles -- about 1/3 of a bag (uncooked)

Marinade note: Instead of making a traditional marinade, I threw in the remnants of a quinoa/blackbean/edamame salad I'd made the week before -- it was dressed in a vinegar/sugar/olive oil/ground mustard dressing, the same one I use for 3-bean salad. I liked the combo a lot in this recipe, but it won't ever happen again LOL

Acceptable marinades should bring many flavors to the party -- Follow the Rule of Three: something acidic & flavorful (like a good vinegar or citrus), something spicy (preferably Southwestern in this case), and something a bit sweet (honey, sugar, juice, a very sweet wine, etc)

PREPARATION:
Prepare the crock pot with a little oil or cooking spray (or in my case, some of the sundried tomato oil).
Add the chicken pieces, garlic, and marinade. (Can add onion too, if desired.)
Leave the crock on the counter for about 30min so chicken can marinate -- if you have time.
Add the corn, beans, and tomatoes (or salsa) to the crock and turn it on to cook.
Cook on HI for about 4 hours, on LO for 5 or 6 (depends on how much chicken).

To finish:
Add the contained of Philadelphia Cooking Cream (or a block of Phila Cream Cheese and some spices) during the 30min of cooking. Let cheese melt into the sauce & leftover marinade.

Once the sauce has formed from the melted cheese etc, add the dry egg noodles (or whatever pasta you desire) -- adjust portion according to the amount of liquid in the crock (lots of liquid? add more pasta.... not much liquid? skip the pasta & cook it separately).
Allow pasta to cook through... then stir & serve!

If you have more chicken than "sauce," reserve the cooked chicken to be chopped & add to pasta or quesadillas or tacos. It's fall-apart tender & very flavorful.

I don't often take the time to write stage reviews, but some shows are worth the trouble.

I've seen many Shakespeare productions in my life thus far, and most of them have been solid. Maybe not "phenomenal," but good enough. But the Warehouse Theater delighted me this past weekend by mounting a show of Midsummer that really lives up to the beauty of the Bard.

Director Jayce Tromsness pointed out in the post-show TalkBack that most productions of Midsummer feel like a mere preamble to the "show within a show" (final act/scene) -- a comic masterpiece, I grant you. No matter how well your actors do in the first 90% of the play, people come to watch the spectacle at the end. The 4 lovers and their problems seem so shallow, often; the fairy story with its magic strikes us as odd and unapproachable. We might laugh at Puck and the two boys fighting over one girl, but in the end the audience is left to wonder why we should care about these mortal fools.

Tromsness hit upon a brilliant idea: What if the acting company itself were experiencing some of these same relationships? What if these characters so familiar to us theater-goers could be revitalized and enriched?

Thus "Teatro Moltoimpassionato" was born, a "company" of Eastern European actors, somewhat washed-up and fractured into little warring factions. [These T.M. players somehow look suspiciously like 6 or 7 Upstate actors....  ... but the troupe does not break character, either on stage or on Facebook. LOL And I *loved* the "actor bios" plus photos by Stephen Boatright.]

Such a "frame tale" device might seem tired, or an attempt to slather on modern story to cover up the "old" Shakespeare. But the WT show instead enhances the play itself like a brilliant jewel in an engagement ring.

The "company" arrives late to the theater, leaving the show manager a nervous wreck.  They find themselves thrown into a last-minute production of Midsummer for their first-ever American show in their tour. Their own arguments and interpersonal problems give energy to the "play within a play within a play" that unfolds on a nearly-bare (yet brilliant) stage.

Six principal actors take on all the roles in Midsummer -- most actors have to play a mechanical, an Athenian, and a fairy -- and these actors have the chops to pull it off. I found each character a distinct, well-developed whole -- including the alter ego Teatro M. personas in addition to the multiple Midsummer characters. The quick switches from role to role never confused the audience because the actors had such a keen grasp of each individual.

I think the beauty of Tromsness's production lies in the depth that experienced actors can bring to the Midsummer story.  Often, we see young adults in these roles -- people who have lived a mere 20 or 25 years on this planet with a paucity of life and love to draw from. Contrast that with the seasoned life of a 40-year-old. Sure, there might be a few gray hairs .... but the rich depth that such an actor can add to his/her role is priceless. The characters are timeless -- shouldn't the casting be released from tedious constraints?

For once, I didn't merely endure the silliness of a lovesick girl and a foolish boy, or the marital argument of two magical royals who seem to inhabit so different a world than I.   In the WT production, the Teatro Moltoimpassionato "actors" were experiencing the same love triangle offstage as they were being forced to present onstage, and those layers of meaning colored the Midsummer lines with emotion that finally made sense of Shakespeare's troubled romances.  This time, I actually felt the desperation of a lonely, spurned woman as she pursued her Demetrius.  I dearly hoped that Titania and Oberon would make peace because I wanted Sergio and Fantalina (the "actors" in those roles) to repair their own "backstage" relationship. I know it sounds weird, but it really WORKS..... It does.  

Every line sparkled in delivery; the humor was spot-on; the interpretation was accessible and fun.

If you get a chance, you really ought to see the Warehouse Theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It's one of the best productions of this fine comedy I've ever come across. Usually, Midsummer doesn't really make you consider any major life questions -- but this show leaves you thoughtful and satisfied. 

Definitely our favorite recipe from this week.

Adapted from something I saw somewhere in Martha Stewart land.

3 strips bacon (I used Hormel--maple)-- diced (The "maple" sweetness works nicely.)
1/2 onion chopped
half jar sundried tomatoes (in oil) -- cut into small pieces
3 garlic cloves, minced
pinch red pepper
1/2 cup sherry
1-2 cups of cooked chicken, diced (I used leftover)
1/2-3/4 cup heavy cream or  half & half
1/4 cup grated parmasean cheese (I used the cheap stuff)
1 bag egg noodles or wide noodles
2-3 very ripe tomatoes (double if serving 4)
Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, etc)
olive oil & balsamic vinegar & sugar & salt

Put water on to boil & cook noodles according to directions, but make sure they are al dente (use the shortest recommended cooking time).

Slice the tomatoes into rounds and into a small bowl -- top with balsamic vinegar, white sugar, salt, and olive oil (a basic dressing). Set aside.... I had a roasted garlic balsamic vinegar & olive oil "dipping oil" and I used that instead (with sugar, salt, pepper) -- it was delightful.

Meanwhile --
Saute bacon over medium heat -- after it releases a little fat, add the onion & saute for several minutes.

When onion/bacon are about halfway cooked, add the sundried tomatoes and cook until bacon & onion are mostly cooked through. Add garlic & red pepper, cook until garlic is fragrant (about 1 min).

Deglaze pan with 1/2 cup sherry or wine. Add the cooked chicken. Cook for about a minute.

Add the cream, Italian seasoning, and Parmasean ... and stir, cooking over med-hi heat to form a sauce. If it gets to thick, add some of the pasta water to the sauce to thin it. After a couple minutes, add the egg noodles & toss to coat. If the sauce isn't thin enough, use pasta water to thin.

Dish the pasta into servings. Top with a portion of the tomato salad -- make sure you put some of the dressing over the tomatoes/pasta as well. Top with fresh ground pepper & some fresh basil (if you have it).

Paired nicely with Camino del Toro Malbec (2009)

Last week I had the incredible opportunity to participate in a "culture panel" hosted by my friend Rebecca who teaches foreign engineers & businesspeople upper-level conversational English. For example, all of the 7 students in the class speak German & work for BMW.  Coart & I joined to help answer questions (and pontificate) about American culture in general, including "taboo" topics like religion and politics. Our discussion ranged from international affairs to the health care debate and American church/social history.

The experience was stimulating, refreshing ... yet humbling. Question #2 from the students came from a lady who asked why America, being a Christian nation, seemed to have little problem with war. The issue of how much our popular media loves violence came up repeatedly. (One dear soul confessed that, thanks to her view of America's love for its guns, if she were ever stranded somewhere and approached a nearby house for help, she'd get shot! We quickly assured her that's not usually how we roll!)  

A bit later, someone asked why America, being a Christian nation, cares so little for its poor. We tried to explain that Americans value having the opportunity to be charitable with our own money, rather than hand it over to the government to distribute.

In the second hour, one man (wisely) commented that Americans confuse nudity with sexuality. The Germans can't comprehend why we care so little for human life and so much about body parts.

All but one of them are non-Christians. Many might be non-theist. Yet they attribute many aspects of American culture to Christian culture, and sharply note the discrepancies when they see them.

Ten years ago, I wouldn't have understood these issues the same way. It's taken the loving rebuke of Christian scholars and careful reading of the Word to change my myopic view of the Gospel. I read a Psalm a day to my homeroom class (this year, I have 7th graders) and daily the psalmists smack me in the face with the obvious connection between claiming to serve a God Who is Just and the necessity to see His justice expressed in human institutions. It's an imperfect, difficult, frustrating, and sometimes impossible work (perhaps in my lifetime, anyway) but I cannot escape it.

Whether we Christians want it or not, the mantle of responsibility for the religious welfare of America's citizens falls about our shoulders. The Gospel cannot be a merely individual proposition. Even the most hearty dispensationalist cannot scrub away the descriptions time and again in Acts: "And so ______ was saved, and his {her] household." The Psalms (especially those of David in the first half) set up a vision of a Good King for the land of Israel:  a man who fears the Lord, who speaks up for the weak who are easy targets for oppression; who makes sure the poor in his kingdom are cared for. 

America is the richest nation ever to exist in the history of the world. We celebrate our extreme good fortune by sipping $4 lattes and complaining when gasoline for our inefficient cars rises above $3/gallon.  Our population, 5% of the world as a whole, consumes 25% of the world's resources.

We revel in "the good life": 
Our cars are big. 
Our houses are huge (by even European standards).
Our food is rich and fatty and caloric when 1 billion of the world's population faces malnourishment this year due to the rapid rise in food prices the world over.
To Americans, our democratic political system is messy and inefficient; to the rest of the world, our openness, freedoms, and lack of corruption in government processes (comparatively) provoke green streaks of envy.
We hoard our riches, close our borders, and pretend none of us had to get off the boat in the loins of our grandfathers who fled the sickness of Europe (or Asia) for a better life.  Or maybe our ancestors were dragged here in chains. Either way, we're faring better than the descendents of the native Americans we found here.

Last Monday's German class humbled me.  It called me back to a "cruciform life" ... no corner of my life can be left unturned by the Gospel.  When America speaks, thanks to the millions of Christians residing here in peace and prosperity, it speaks (and acts) with the stamp of the Church's approval.  In a rare fit of agreement with Doug Wilson, I say our first duty must be to repent for not doing a very good job sometimes.

from Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation, by James K. A. Smith:

*Smith would explain that this "flawed anthropology" is our tendency in Christian circles to define people as thinkers or believers (thus ministers try to change beliefs and worldviews) instead of recognizing that humans are, at heart, lovers and desirers and worshipers. What we LOVE determines what we believe and how we act. 

Smith's thesis is that our desires are "trained" by our practices, not by our beliefs. We live (subconsciously) according to our notion of "the good life" -- we bend everything toward achieving that life for ourselves, and how we define "the good life" depends entirely on what we love.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

--e e cummings

 Sometimes you end up in the presence of a true musician, someone who lives and breathes music. Rhythm and melody are their blood; they feed on life but mix it with creativity to offer lucky audience members a taste of what God must have intended for the human race.

Yann Tiersen is such a soul.

Shout-out to Sam, who messaged me a month ago to ask if we wanted to accompany him & Nate to Tiersen's show in Atlanta this weekend. I've been familiar with Tiersen's work ever since Nate IM'd me a YouTube video with the command to "Watch."  I've learned to trust Nate's music sensibilities -- his radar is calibrated to "quality" -- and I was intrigued.

Yann plays I-don't-know-how-many instruments. A rough list would include piano, various keyboards & synthesizers & electronic bits, mandolin, accordion, guitar & electric guitar, and violin.

For example, he can tear up the violin....  or break your heart with gorgeous melody ...  or mix it all together into a great composition.

Returning to my story --

The Atlanta concert was a true delight. An odd time, though -- Tiersen was scheduled to play at The Masquerade with doors opening at 9:30pm. The Masq is the main hardcore venue in Atlanta, and they had a major show running on the upstairs stage that same night. As we waited patiently for "something" to happen downstairs in Hell (the upstairs and downstairs Masq stages are titled Heaven and Hell, appropriately), we saw the ceiling above our heads thump and sway at least 6 inches beneath the weight of hundreds of moshing teenagers. [The Masq always looks like it's going to literally fall down on your head -- it's part of the atmosphere. lol]

After the opening act and then watching a hardworking sound guy set up 12 instruments by himself, our patience finally was rewarded by the emergence of Yann & friends.

And it. was. AWESOME.

"One! Two! Three! Four!!" .... soft mandolin notes opened a song of marvelous beauty.  The stage musicians included a bass player, drummer, guitarist (Gibson SG), a guy on some kind of electronic thing that I can't identify, another guy on keyboards and ukelele, and Yann himself playing guitar, mandolin, or violin as needed. 

I find an intense joy in watching an artist glory in his art -- squeezing every drop of JOY out of the experience of stepping onto a platform and baring his creative soul to the mass of people drinking it up. Nothing replaces the exuberance of a live performance. Every raw note stands as its own monument to ART, to creativity, to expression.

It was a good audience too, for the most part. Older than typical for the Masq, and culturally diverse. They were etiquette-diverse too -- I was pushed or jostled by people speaking at least 2 different languages (besides English or Spanish) and some giant hairy fellow stepped in front of Sam to "take this empty spot right here." (It wasn't "empty" at all, and we asked the red-haired giant to please not stand in front of us since it was impossible to see overtop of him.)  But those were isolated incidents. Mostly, we all just stood and enjoyed every bit of the 90 minute set.

I recommend spending some time with Yann Tiersen on YouTube or Grooveshark if you like "world music," classical, folk, indie rock, or Phillip-Glass-style movie soundtracks.  We could all use some more beauty in our souls, and Tiersen channels enough for us all.

From the blog Positive Science, Negative Theology:

Full post here

Associated thought --
I'm currently reading an outstanding book by James K. A. Smith titled Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.  A significant component of Smith's thesis lies in the idea that the rational, Enlightenment, Modernist perception of people-as-thinkers or even the Reformed emphasis on people-as-believers fully misses the multifaceted reality of what a human being really is.....

More to come.

What if education, including higher education, is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? What if we began by appreciating how education not only gets into our head but also (and more fundamentally) grabs us by the gut -- what the New Testament refers to as kardia, "the heart"? What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions -- our visions of "the good life" -- and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs to our thinking? What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect? And what if this had as much to do with our bodies as with our minds?

What if education wasn't first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?

~from "Introduction," Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, by James K. A. Smith, pp 18-19

[cross-posted to Teaching Redemptively]

...Musings on theater, life, and directing.... seasoned with a bit of "after midnight."

I don't "do theater" for a living. (See, the proof is in the fact that I generally spell "theater" the American way instead of the fancy-schmancy artistic old British spelling with the -re ending.)

I do find myself "doing theater" -- as I have for the past 6 years -- as an interesting side path to my work teaching English to middle and high schoolers. What started in 2005 as a 7th grade unit on dramatic literature (culminating in some in-house performances that simultaneously brought a measure of healing and comradeship to an otherwise brutally-fractured class) has grown into a foundational stone for the upper school at NCS. Who would have foreseen it? This spring finds us doing two major shows (unwisely, probably, but that's how it turned out). So my soul has belonged to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, knowing that January 27th is breathing down my neck. (Opening night.)

Tonight I finally made it to my couch weary of body and exhausted in mind sometime around 9pm. It's been a long week, coming on the heels of horrific schedule headaches from the big snowstorm and before that, several illnesses in my cast members. Coart likes to say "Anything worth doing is hard."  I'm not sure that the converse of the statement is necessarily true (isn't that a logical fallacy anyway? lol) but it's certainly one of the pithy aphorisms that's pulling me through the long days. "Anything hard must be worth doing" ... right?

Working with students always teaches me far more than I teach them. I was struck today by the wonderful good-naturedness of this group of 7 students who have survived auditions, reading rehearsals, blocking, hours of work memorizing lines, illness, losing a cast member at the last minute, and now long "full runs" ... all stacked on top of their normal school day and wedged into "free hours" they have before tackling homework. I'm not sure I would be so charitable were I in their shoes, but these older, more experienced students chose this play as their semester project and they are still very excited about putting on a good show.  They're so excited that most of them volunteered themselves to go paint the set tomorrow because they want it to look better. This is righteousness outworked (not just thinking, not just critiquing... but doing.)

I love projects that blend faculty (or adults in general) with students. We sharpen each other -- the young'uns bring enthusiasm and energy and a strong impetus against the stodgy inertia that seems to overtake adults, while the adults anchor the cast with seasoned calm and a rich flow of life experience with which to flesh out characters. In fact, I'd say the student-faculty partnership that pervades NCS culture is more important than anything else we do. Should we not perceive Paul's inspired wisdom when he directed the Cretan church under Titus to value mentoring relationships as the backbone of Christian discipleship? 

People generally don't understand exactly why Coart & I bother "doing plays" at NCS.  ....It's not because we love doing theater. (It's not that we dislike it either; but neither of us were trained in this and sometimes the learning curve slaps us around pretty hard.)   I don't try to correct the crowds who assume I "love" acting, directing, or performance in general. Actually, I have to fight against every fiber of emotional control built into my personality just to begin thinking about playing a role.  

It's also not because doing theater is easy, or a cop-out for teaching -- anyone who chooses a 60+ hour workweek without better cause is probably insane.

And I have no desire to shut out music or art or dance or any of the other creative arts from the lives of students (though life quickly teaches all of us that we have only so many hours to spend). Lucky or unlucky, our students "benefit" from the package of gifts endowed to Coart and me, which lie more with speaking than art or music. So. Theater it is.

Rather, I pull myself out of bed and through an over-full day of teaching (this week: Norse mythology, Latin noun plurals, American Realist literature, Hamlet Act 2, poetry, and basic script analysis) and into a long afternoon of rehearsal by remembering that my greatest joy as a teacher is to see a young person grow from shy un-confidence (is that a word?) into a fearless, friendly soul; a person who has learned the art of observing human nature and recreating it; of one who soaks up the Story in the hopes that some bit of Heaven-Redemption finds its way to earth whenever Story Truth strikes the heart of the performer (first) and the audience.

I really don't have a clue what a director is supposed to do.  Well, some details are obvious project management -- find a performance space, select a script, make the casting decisions after auditions, develop a plan for studying and interpreting the text and then bringing that text to life by creating a "safe" space where actors can take themselves through a journey of discovery within the story and setting and characters. It's all quite nebulous, really..  "The best in this kind are but shadows," Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Theseus in Midsummer Night's Dream.

I find play directing immensely energizing (the creative output required delights my right-brain) yet intensely discouraging.

A play doesn't succeed at NCS because the director did a "good job."  We tell stories well when I succeed in getting the students to understand first and then internalize and finally transmit the soul of a tale.  Unfortunately my cast members lack buttons, knobs, or efficient input devices.  Most rehearsal days simply serve as a reminder of everything I haven't accomplished.  I think I've bandaged my ego 12 times this week.

For us, the "product" isn't so much the point as the "process." This is education, not theater business (though I still have a budget and it needles me). I want our shows to be qualitatively good: an engaging experience for the audience and worthy of their time. But that has to take second seat to my deeper goal of raising up men and women who understand Kingdom living. These goals have to work together. The kids must learn to invest great labor in a project whose outcome is out of their control (and mine, to a large extent).  We are only as strong as our weakest cast member, yet seeing students rally around a kid who's failed them is incredible. The missteps and inexperience of students slowly mature into something beautiful. The Story begins to shine, a sum greater than the actor's parts. And it's magic.

These past 3 hard, frustrating, difficult, sleep-depriving weeks brought me a deep gift as compensation:  the opportunity to see the mettle of our seniors and juniors tested.  Their kindness, enthusiasm, willing hearts, hard work, joyful wit -- all have lifted my spirits.   To see them grow, individually, in a skill that isn't "natural" for most of them reminds me that we often "need" what we don't particularly "want."   I love my job in all of its exhausting, stressful avenues.  And I love my students.

We offer to you the work of our hands because God created Story-lovers. 
Nothing would thrill us more than for you to share in our joy.