Category: Cooking

Potluck

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My husband is an excellent cook. He prepares our dinners with love and panache. I am more the pancake-and-egg guy in our relationship. Breakfasts are my thing.

Occasionally, we switch things up. Today is one of those days.

Our friend Jeremy has invited us to his Thanksgiving potluck this evening … a low-key gathering with friends and a few in his family.

Yesterday, I decided I would make a pot of chicken chili for Jeremy’s Friendsgiving today. It is simmering in our slow cooker as I write this. It’s a delicious, easy, non-traditional dish.

I haven’t made it in years, but the timing is right. The weather is cooler. I want to prepare something meaningful to share with our friend, who is managing his way on the road of life through a monumental year of personal growth mixed with significant detours and setbacks.

As background, Jeremy came out to his friends, family, and the world a little over a year ago. He and his wife are no longer a couple, but they continue to be loving parents to all five of their children. It’s impressive that even during this period of uncertainty they have maintained a respectful relationship.

I know fatherhood is important to Jeremy. He loves and supports his children. I remember how difficult it was for me to balance my fatherhood, demanding career, and “gay awakening” thirty years ago. I suspect it is the same in this moment for Jeremy.

All of this leads me back to this recipe for chicken chili. In the early 1990s, after Jean and I divorced, I felt broken–broke, too–and I existed in a fog, especially in the colder months.

My sons spent half their time with me in my tiny apartment. I needed to find inexpensive, flavorful dishes, which I could prepare for dinner for Nick, Kirk, and me. To feed and nourish us. To keep us close.

This chicken chili recipe is one I made frequently thirty years ago. Not so much lately. But it makes perfect sense to resurrect it today. To bridge the past of balancing my gay identity and single fatherhood with the present of Jeremy’s.

So, I am making chicken chili now for about a dozen (Jeremy’s supportive friends and a few of his children) who will gather on a coolish and likely rainy Saturday evening in the desert.

Together we will give thanks for friendships … the potluck of life that nourishes us and allows us to learn and grow during good times and bad.

Egg Custard Pie: A Holiday Favorite

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If you follow my blog, you know that–in addition to being a writer–I am the baker in our family. One of my favorite desserts for the holidays is egg custard pie.

If you’re looking for a simple-to-bake-and-creamy pie recipe, this one is a keeper. It definitely qualifies as comfort food at a time in the world when we could all use a heaping helping of that.

This recipe was passed to me via the southern branch of my family tree … from my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Martha Jane Matilda Simpson Miller. She lived in rural Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in the early 1900s.

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Ingredients: 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 stick butter, 4 large eggs, 3 tablespoons flour, 1 2/3 cups milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Directions: Cream sugar and butter until light. Beat eggs and add to sugar/butter mixture. Add flour and beat until smooth. Add vanilla to milk. Mix milk into other ingredients gradually until smooth. Pour into an unbaked pie crust (deep dish) and bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until custard is set and crust is brown. (The original recipe didn’t call for cinnamon, but I like it. If you do too, sprinkle the pie liberally before you place it in the oven.)

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Incidentally, this egg custard pie recipe also appears in From Fertile Ground, my first book. which I wrote and published in 2016. It’s not a cookbook, but a memoir about love, loss, and grief … and the healing power of the written word across three generations of my family. If you haven’t read it, I hope you’ll check it out.

Most important, as 2021 comes to a close, I wish you good health. As we continue to endure this global health crisis, I encourage you to find comfort in your creative passions in 2022.