Pies - My Way

I have trouble following recipes. It has been a joke in our family ever since our wedding 50 years ago. Someone tells me how to make something new, or I see a good recipe in a book and I resolve to fix it just like the recipe says.

Only I never do. Afterwards I say things like, “This time I made it EXACTLY according to directions. Except that I didn’t have any cloves so I used ginger”. Or “My oven always cooks things faster than it should, so I took it out sooner.” Or “I don’t like garlic that much, so I used less.” In other words I didn’t make it like the recipe. I don’t recall ever having made anything like the recipe said.

This afternoon I decided I was going to break that pattern. Pumpkin pies were called for, so I decided I would follow exactly the directions on the can of pumpkin. And I did. Except that instead of mixing the spices and stevia into the pumpkin I mixed them into the beaten eggs instead, because it seemed like less work and required one less bowl that would need to be washed. I didn’t realize what I had done until afterwards. Once again I had not followed directions.

Something in me rebels at following someone else’s directions. I’ve never been fired for this, not even when I was doing biochemical research, because I kept records of what I did and justified the changes. It is true that as a missionary in Costa Rica I was reproached by my supervisor for having the audacity to lead a grandmother to the Lord when I was supposed to be concentrating my attention on university students. But then, there she WAS, and she wanted to know JESUS.

I think my rebellion against recipes and laws in general is a condition common to all of humanity. I want to do it my way. Like the song, you know? “I did it myyy way.” And that’s supposed to be so great. That’s creativity, that’s how we do things better and better. Just yesterday I posted a piece on my website (www.treasuresnewandold.org) in favor of not establishing one best way to do things.

And yet, wanting to do it our own way can get us into trouble when it is God’s way we want to ignore. And we do. All we like sheep just go wandering away in pursuit of our own plans and goals, either ignoring or willfully flouting what He says about our purpose in life, our relationships, our behavior. “And the Lord has laid on Jesus the sin of us all.”

It boils down to knowing the difference between the recipe you can play with (think potato salad) and the one you really shouldn’t (think soufflé). Our relationship with God is not based on our keeping all the rules, fortunately, but rather on the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the cross. Nevertheless, maintaining a relationship with Him while deliberately flouting what He has told us to do isn’t going to work very well. He didn’t make the rules for His own benefit, but for ours. He knew what would make us happy and what would make us miserable and He told us how to get to happy. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Anyway, my creative adjustments to the pie recipe seem not to have ruined the results. The local population has expressed a desire to eat them anyway, in spite of the burned spot on the top of one of them. That happened because I was going to leave them in for the stipulated number of minutes. Good job that I took them out “early”.

So much for recipes.