For Christmas, I got these awesome cookbooks. They're filled with recipes that "hide" vegetables. You know, so your kids will eat them without knowing it. Or, in my case, so I will eat them with only partially knowing it. I really don't like vegetables. Carrots taste like soap to me. Cauliflower makes me gag. Sweet peppers are okay, but I taste them for 48 hours after I eat them. Celery? Ha. Celery sticks are simply a way of getting ranch dip into my mouth faster.
So tonight I was all excited to try one of the new recipes. I was to make pumpkin ravioli, from scratch. Well, sort of from scratch anyway. The recipe has you make them from wonton wrappers (which make potstickers, dumplings, that type of thing). Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. They were absolutely nasty, mainly because the wonton wrappers were slimy once they boiled for several minutes. Slippery and slimy are never good adjectives for food. The filling was okay, though. I put a whole lotta garlic in there. I loooove me some garlic. If a recipe calls for two cloves, I put in six. Can't go wrong with garlic. Garlic brings food from bland to brilliant.
It's crazy how much a little spice can change the experience of food. Four years ago, I was eating in a resteraunt with my extended family during a family reunion weekend. I ordered pancakes. But something was odd about them. There was something in them, something very different from the typical hints of cinnamon or nutmeg. I handed my plate to my sister.
"What do you think is in these?" I asked. She took a bite, wrinkled her nose, then looked upwards in thought before passing the plate to our mother.
"Try this," she told her. "What is that?"
This process repeated itself over and over until nine of my relatives had "tasted" through half of my breakfast. They were all stumped. We asked our waiter, who inquired the chef. He came back.
"Did you find out?" I asked eagerly.
"Cardamum," he said.
"Caaaaar-di-muuuum," all nine of us said with an "aha!" tone.
I was reading Matthew 5:13 today:
"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men."
Ouch. I feel convicted. I am blending in too much with the world. If the world is pasta, all I'm adding is bland parmesan. And not the fresh kind of parmesan, either; we're talking the parmesan powder that comes in that green shiny shaker can and clumps up in the fridge; you know, that one that's been in the door of your fridge for the last five years. That's how bland I feel these days.
As a Christian, I'm supposed to stand out. To add a joyful difference, something that stands out to others, something refreshing, and maybe even a little peculiar. Cardamum. A bay leaf. Even some fresh pressed garlic. But I feel like I'm just marching with the masses, shaking my tired parmesan all over the place.
Lord God, as I try to read Your Word more, and as I try to spend time listening to you....may it change me. I want to be different. Different than I am now; different than others. To make different choices. To have a different attitude and outlook. I desire to have the flavor back, so that others may look at me, and say, "what exactly is that?" It is not enough to be a Christian if I am not different from the world around me. Change me, Lord. Amen.
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