Cornbread, Chili, and Glass
Or, Would-Be Country Songs I Hope You Never Live Out
Mercifully, I have never been poor. But I did go to college in New York City, to a college with no meal plan.1 So, even though I had incredibly generous parents2 who gave me a monthly allotment for groceries (that also had to cover transportation, toiletries, etc.), anything short of one million dollars was going to feel a little tight in NYC. And honestly, it was incredibly tight.
I didn’t just live in NYC—I lived in Midtown Manhattan. You may not have realized this, but in the establishment shots of the Empire State Building, Central Park, and Times Square, there are not also, like, Albertsons everywhere. Instead, my grocery store choices were Walgreens (perfect for sale cereal, ice cream, and milk that would go bad within the week) and Trader Joe’s3 (over a mile away and perfect for quirky, quippy versions of pasta and sauce, granola, yogurt, and coffee). I mostly did not buy meat or fresh produce in college because they were expensive and also not very fresh. The concept of New York Harbor is absolutely lost on the grocers of Manhattan.4
Anyway. My wonderful mom sent me chili mix and cornbread mix in a care package.5 And I, like so many people who are less well off, decided to invite everyone over for a real meal. And so I went to spend my precious dollars on a pound of ground beef (hard to find), tomato paste (harder to find), and whatever eggs/milk/oil/butter/honey were not already supplied by the single food cupboard in my tiny galley kitchen.6 I may have also sprung for cheddar cheese and sour cream. A feast!
I had, I believe, an 8.5”x11” amount of counter space in the entire kitchen and it may have been less. I think I mixed the cornbread ingredients on our kitchen table. Or a desk. Anyway, I mixed the cornbread and put it in a glass baking dish to bake and then started on the chili. The chili took less effort, but was still a little tricky because I was 18 and cooking in a kitchen smaller than most toddler toy kitchens. The chili was simmering happily on the electric cooktop, I took the cornbread out of the oven and set it on the cooktop to cool (again: no countertop space), and set about preparing toppings and figuring out how our meager supply of dishes would work for the small crowd that was starting to gather, when
BANG!
The glass baking dish, hot from the oven and hotter from the electric cooktop, exploded. Glass went flying. Including, *plop* into the chili.
I wanted to cry.7
Instead, I surveyed my options. Which was basically that this was the only dinner option for me and several other hungry college students, and I could serve it or …. Nope. I had to serve it. There was not going to be enough money to declare this meal a waste.
So I dutifully fished out all the “big chunks” of glass from the chili and warned everyone that they didn’t have to eat it, and if they did, please be careful. And I am pretty sure that everyone just said okay and ate the chili and I never heard about anyone having punctured intestines or bleeding out through their esophagi or whatever happens if you eat glass in chili.
***
My son has started requesting stories about when his dad and I were younger. Mostly his dad. But I was pretty excited to tell him this story. Except, thanks to my marvelous storytelling, I made the BANG! very compelling, and it scared him. So tonight he asked me repeatedly to tell him stories about making cornbread and it not exploding. And so I told him a lot of really boring stories about all the other times that I just ate cornbread. He seemed confused about why they were so boring.
It’s hard to be 3. And it’s hard to be 18. And if you find something hard in your chili, don’t eat it. It might be glass.
Honestly, this is not in the top 5 weirdest things about where I went to college. Basically, I was 18 and I went to grad school. I lived in a tiny apartment in NYC and was responsible for my whole life. Only later would I “Benjamin Button” myself into going to college for law school.
It is not lost on me how amazing it was to have my parents cover my college tuition. So that’s where “generous” is coming in here. Like, wow, thank you guys for paying for me to go to college AND for giving me a little money for food! This is not like, wow, my parents gave me a monthly food budget equal to the cost of the left shoe of someone from Bama Rush.
Importantly, this Trader Joe’s was across the street from NYU. So to shop there, you stood in the checkout line, which started outside the store and wrapped its way up and down every aisle. I have never seen anything like it. By the end of my college career, we had a palatial Trader Joe’s in Chelsea, but nothing is quite like those early days of shopping from the checkout line.
There were two notable other grocery store options. Gristedes, which was excellent if you lived on the Upper East Side and were interested in artisanal mushrooms and white asparagus; and Whole Foods, which was excellent if your grocery budget was equivalent to the cost of an entire pair of shoes of someone from Bama Rush.
Knowing my mom, there were other little goodies and treats. She does a perfect job balancing necessities and little extras. I don’t remember everything in that care package, but I can guarantee it was the best thing that happened to me that week.
This kitchen was so small that if I stood with my arms outstretched, one arm on the wall, the other arm was outside the kitchen. I shared this apartment with three other girls.
I don’t think that I did, because even though the amount I want to cry has remained basically constant, the absolutely incredible hormonal journey of having children has really loosened my controls on “things acceptable to cry about” from “death of a loved one” down to “TV commercial about a puppy getting a bowl with its name.”