Cooking Tips I Learned the Hard Way

I am the last person on earth you should ever take cooking lessons from.  Except for one simple fact.

I’m a survivor.

This in itself is proof of God’s divine intervention in my life, as anyone who has ever witnessed my cooking can attest.  Cooking, for me, frequently involves large flames, explosions, billowing smoke, and the sound of running footsteps fleeing the premises.  And that’s on a good day.  We won’t discuss the bad days.

Despite this apparent handicap, I continue to persevere.  Mostly because I have no choice.  Because as much as I dislike cooking, I really like eating.  And one of these days I’m convinced I’m going to actually cook something that doesn’t require extrication by men in HazMat suits.  My father can then stop buying me kitchen fire extinguishers as house-warming gifts.

In the meantime, I have begun to compile all the important lessons I’ve learned, and I have decided to share them with you.  You may wonder what my cooking tips have to do with God.  A whole lot, I think.  First, we are in the mustard patch, and mustard can serve as a condiment, a fine cooking ingredient, or, in a pinch, an entire three-course meal.  Seems relevant to me.

On a more serious note, I was surprised, when I actually paused to think about it, just how many stories in the Bible involve food.  There are feasts being prepared in celebration (Luke 15:23), God providentially providing for his people (Exodus 16), food stores that miraculously never run out (1 Kings 17:16; Matthew 14:13-21), or Jesus himself turning water into wine (John 2:1-12).  None of my tips are quite that good – I’m still trying to boil potatoes without setting off the smoke detector – but I think it’s fair to say cooking tips are not entirely outside the scope of Biblical insight.  So I’m going to see where they take us.  If nothing else, maybe I can save someone else from having to learn these things the hard way.

Watch for the random posts with the Cooking Tip heading; together maybe we can save the HazMat folks another trip to town.  And learn a little something about serving Jesus along the way.

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Feed my lambs” (John 21:15).