Collage and Taco Soup

My mom was an avid tea drinker.  I say avid rather than prolific because she really only liked one kind:  Lipton Tea.  That’s right, just Lipton Tea; not black tea, or green tea, or iced tea.  In her last few months, when her usual Diet Pepsi was no longer an option, we did manage to get her to broaden her tea horizons.  However, the adventure was often short lived.  She’d try a few bags of Earl Grey or Chamomile, then go back to her old standard (though she did take a shine to English Breakfast Tea).  As my dad has worked to bit-by-bit clean out their house, which he affectionately calls “the mausoleum” I inherited Mom’s tea collection.  My dad, a coffee addict, bought me my first coffee maker at sixteen (to help get me to my 6am student council meetings) and I have been both an avid AND prolific coffee drinker ever since.  Then sometime last week I ran out of Caribou coffee and there was this pile of tea sitting in my cabinet…

I’ve always been a big fan of collage.  It is the style of choice when you don’t have the time, the materials, or perhaps the talent to create a painting, a sculpture, or, for me, pottery.  It’s this fabulous, simple way to express oneself by piecing together bits of anything and making a whole.  Lately, collage has been my philosophy of living, a life that seems at times to be a patchwork quilt of trial and error.  With the loss of one life and the addition of two lives into my existence in a relatively short amount of time, I’ve been putting together lots of different pieces in an effort to construct some kind of whole way of living.  So far the collage is eclectic (bordering on tacky), definitely colorful, and often surprisingly fulfilling and beautiful (like right now as my toddler tries to put her arms around my sitting infant and rock him).  In this space drinking my mom’s tea, itself a collection of multi-colored randomness, has come to be a centering ritual throughout my day.

Perhaps this philosophy of collage is what makes Paula Deen’s Taco Soup such a comforting dish.

Taco Soup

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 2 cups diced onions
• 2 (15 1/2-ounce) cans pinto beans
• 1 (15 1/2-ounce) can pink kidney beans
• 1 (15 1/4-ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained
• 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can Mexican-style stewed tomatoes
• 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can tomatoes with chiles
• 2 (4 1/2-ounce) cans diced green chiles
• 1 (4.6-ounce) can black olives, drained and sliced, optional
• 1/2 cup green olives, sliced, optional
• 1 (1 1/4-ounce) package taco seasoning mix
• 1 (1-ounce) package ranch salad dressing mix
• Corn chips, for serving
• Sour cream, for garnish
• Grated cheese, for garnish
• Chopped green onions, for garnish
• Pickled jalapenos, for garnish

1.  Brown the ground beef and onions in a large skillet; drain the excess fat, then transfer the browned beef and onions to a large slow cooker or a stockpot. Add the beans, corn, tomatoes, green chiles, black olives, green olives, taco seasoning, and ranch dressing mix, and cook in a slow cooker on low for 6 to 8 hours or simmer over low heat for about 1 hour in a pot on the stove. To serve, place a few corn chips in each bowl and ladle soup over them. Top with sour cream, cheese, green onions and jalapenos.

The best part of this recipe (and crock pot recipes in general now that I’m gaining confidence) is that I get to add my own bits and pieces as I go.  Knowing my love affair with Picadillo (see first blog entry) I knew the “soup” part of this recipe wasn’t to my taste, so I tried to reduce the liquid factor as much as possible. That’s where the collage part came in.  I drained the liquid and rinsed everything in cans with the exception of the tomatoes which went in liquid and all.  Pretty colorful, eh?

Collage has quickly and of necessity become my method of writing my dissertation as well.  I discovered it while writing my prospectus with a one-year old at my side.  I compose what Anne Lamott calls a “shitty rough draft” (usually contains topic sentences for each paragraph and some general idea of where I’m headed thought-wise) and print in out, warts and all.  Then I cut up all the paragraphs, literally; I take a pair of scissors and cut it to shreds.  Then I rearrange the paragraphs if need be, and then I paste each paragraph into a notebook with an empty page facing the typed page.  Then, I start writing the thing all over again.  The notebook usually ends up scrawled on with arrows, notes, and directions to go to different pages.  When I put the whole thing back together it’s usually complete and much more complex than what I get typing it out.  This makes is easy to take my writing with me wherever I go (the kitchen table, the backyard, the living room floor, next to the bathtub).  It’s less conspicuous than the computer so the toddler is less likely to take an interest in it or become jealous because it’s taking up too much of mommy’s attention.  Kids have forced me to get more creative about writing, which in turn, has made my writing more creative.

This collage writing method has leaped off the page and into my living space as well.  I’ve had to come up with interesting ways of holding onto thoughts and mapping ideas.  This is a picture of yesterday’s efforts: my toddler’s and my interpretations of women’s role in eugenics.  Somehow Crayola markers make writing into a game. Working this way also helps me hold onto thoughts through myriad interruptions of temper tantrums, accidents, feedings, nursings, headaches, and spontaneous sleep episodes.  I’ve found that, like crock pot meals, some thought-trains are much more appetizing after simmering for a day, permeating my living space with the delicious smells of what’s to come at the end of the cooking process.

I must admit I’ve cooked this Taco Soup recipe at least twice now (yes, I’ve been procrastinating, see previous post).  Draining all the juices was by far the more successful and tasty of the two.  Like the picadillo recipe, it is really dynamic: makes wonderful taco filling, goes well over rice, or as part of a taco salad.  The second time I made this I didn’t drain the cans and it was not nearly as flavorful as the first time.  Though we managed to pound this in about a week, I’m sure it works well frozen.  An additional note:  Paula says this recipe serves 6…I think in her house each serving really counts as two.  We had copious leftovers.  It’s super easy and super cheap for those on a budget, and, like most ground beef crock pot meals, my toddler cannot get enough of it.  It’s varied and tasty, as well as colorful; the perfect collage of ingredients.

For now my whole way of living is best summarized by my living space and rituals: random training potties in various places, bits of deflated balloons, pennies, playing cards, Cheerios and dolls strewn across the floor, horribly scratched Pixar DVD’s skipping on the TV screen, a quote about the size of the female pelvis and its relation to “racial betterment” stewing in my head, the smell of Martha Stewart’s pulled pork wafting in from the kitchen, the baby asleep, my toddler’s head resting on my arm, and a cup of Earl Grey with a bit of milk and sugar in my hand.  Maybe not bliss, but definitely fulfilling.