You know, frankly, I’m glad I didn’t know anything about cooking when I got married. It has been a wonderful process of discovery. Food is Fun. Cooking is an end unto itself. Food comes in the most brilliant shapes and colors–more than once, I have whipped out my camera and documented whatever I was making. You won’t believe this. I have actually started to read cookbooks, the ones with the pictures. It is just too much fun to look at the creations and see how the food looked at every stage of its incarnation. Today I was pretty happy because I figured out what a mandoline was. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody talk about a mandoline, if it’s pronounced the way I think it is (man-doh-line) but now I will feel more equipped to participate in food discussions. Apparently it “juliennes” things, which I think my food processor also does. My food processor is a marvel, in my opinion. I put it together all by myself and used it for the first time when I was making strawberry ice cream. I am a really slow, meticulous cutter, and I didn’t want to spend an hour cutting the strawberries into little pieces. So I threw them down the chute of the food processor, and I swear, it chopped and mashed them exactly to my specifications in about two minutes. It took me longer to clean the thing afterwards. I love my new gadgets! I have made two kinds of ice cream in my ice cream maker, the strawberry and some vanilla which–I am not bragging because I didn’t do anything–was the absolute best vanilla ice cream I have ever tasted. You can ask my husband, I ate it every night for a week. I ate almost all of the ice cream, and there was a lot. When I was growing up, I thought all there was to cooking was casseroles, and occasionally a roast with carrots and potatoes. My mom was a really good cook but she made casseroles almost exclusively for dinner. Her cakes, cookies and pies–yum!! I am finding out these days that parts of domestic life are very enjoyable.
Joy, Victory … Crap June 4, 2008
One of the battles I always fight when trying to comfort a hurting person is to understand their pain and allow them to feel their pain and process it in their own way, but to also want to tell them what I believe is true about them and their situation, as well as what God has to say about it (he speaks through verses I have hanging up in my cubicle) or through emails or through my own mind that tingles like it’s been electrocuted when I get a “communicado” from up there. How do I tell people the truth in a way that won’t encourage them to turn on me with a freezing stare and exclaim, “You just don’t get it!” Or in a way that doesn’t make me want to gag on the words I’m saying? When somebody is really down, how much is the right response “That sucks” and how much is it “This is actually going to become a beautiful story because God can put all this right and teach you to love him more while he’s doing it”? I wrote an email today to someone I love very much that was more along the lines of the second, and I’m wondering if I was too much “Yay God!” and not enough “Major freaking bummer.” I tried to keep it from sounding like anything akin to the prosperity gospel or the “everything is going to be alright” schtick, because if I’ve learned anything in my 28 years, it’s that things aren’t going to be alright anytime soon and that is a false hope that nobody should cling to. I want to see the tiny flashes of light in someone’s dark world, but not be flippant or condescending or mimimalize their stuff. Or, God forbid, misinterpret scriptures to make them think things are going to work out in no time. I just want to learn how to be a better friend in the dark times.
