Every
teenager knows everything and I was no exception. Wait, there was one tiny
exception: I definitely knew way more than you
could ever know.
Our summers in Redding were long, hot and filled with non-stop F-U-N. My
four close girlfriends and I rode horses, bicycles, motorcycles, swam in each
other’s swimming pools, camped out on our parents' lawns and made trips to
Circle K for Slurpees.
Each morning, the four of us took
turns preparing breakfast. One summer morning it was my turn to prepare my
mother’s well known sour cream pancakes. The
pancake recipe called for an entire cube of melted butter. Positive the recipe
was mistaken, I left the butter out. The girls filed in one by one as the cakes
bubbled on the griddle. Twirling the spatula, I knew I had this nailed hands
down. The girls sat at the kitchen counter next to the griddle, watching with
anticipation. Slowly, the edges of the pancakes began curling upward.
Startled, I distracted the girls with orange juice,
hot syrup AND the necessary butter for their pancakes. The silent stares were
broken when Donna asked, “Hey Deb, do the pancakes look a little strange to
you?” Defending my efforts, I replied, “No, of course not. That’s the way
they’re supposed to look.”
To prove my point, I said I’d feed one to Cleo, our
German Shepard. I called Cleo knowing she’d gobble the pancake. She sniffed the
pancake on the kitchen floor and walked away. I picked up the pancake, threw it
onto the kitchen floor and watched it bounce. In lieu of breakfast, we raced outside
and jumped into the swimming pool for a round of Marco Polo.
The teenage years of cooking experiences continued.
Ross, my brother, tried cutting his birthday cake with a saw and chisel, while Ronnie,
my step-brother, had his birthday banana cream pie pour onto the dinner table. The
cake had too much corn starch, while the pie had none. I was too lazy to drag a
chair to the top of the cupboard and get the corn starch.
The spaghetti sauce for the dinner upheld the wooden
spoon. I neglected to add water to the can of tomato paste. My brothers raced
out the back door when they saw the pot of sauce with the spoon standing
straight up in the middle. When my mother came home to find only me, she asked,
“Debbie, what could you have possible done to this sauce?” Shrugging my
shoulders, I asked, “Mom, what’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re going to
starve to death!” My frustrated mother replied, “Debbie, why can’t you ever
just follow the recipe?”
Pre-heat oven to temperature of choice. Clear counter
top and make room for an array of attempts. Get largest mixing bowl from under
counter. Don’t bother with measuring spoons/cups. They won’t get used.
Mix together following
ingredients as needed:
1.
Wisdom from
years of efforts, failures, successes
3.
Regrets,
longings, aching in heart
5.
Patience,
impatience, frustration
6.
Fulfillment from
various corners of life
7.
Faith
8.
Advice given or
received
9.
Shrieks of
laughter
10.
A romantic love like
no other
Pour ingredients into heart-shaped pan and set in
oven until visually baked. At end of time, pull out of oven, wait until cooled
and take a bite. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy every morsel, however, if not there’s
always embracing of this one.
Leaving out an ingredient here, adding an ingredient
there, the recipes in my mother’s cookbooks never worked for me. As an adult,
I’ve created my own recipes from my own experiences, and am having tremendous success.
From I Corinthian 13:13,
I learned, “The three most important ingredients to have in life are faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.”
Mixing these three ingredients into my life’s bowl,
I'm giving it a try. I now, however, turn on the oven when I want
the cookies to bake rather than just have the light melt them. Before I blindly
navigate another half century of life away, I’ll lovingly mixing faith and hope into my life’s bowl to see whether this is the recipe for life.
