Main ingredient: Love

My ingredient: Frustration

My dearest friends in Peru always say when they share a meal with others that the main ingredient that is put into the meal is love. 

I served a different type of Peruvian meal tonight.... pouring in 50% love and 50% frustration. 

I truly do enjoy cooking, especially for others, and I really love sharing things from Peru with others...so a few weeks ago, I signed up to bring dinner for life group, with the intention of making a Peruvian meal. All the ingredients in Peruvian meals are fresh, you make everything from scratch, which is more delicious, but more work. (I think the next time I sign up I'm bringing Stouffer's). 

It was our last life group meeting, and 2 life groups were coming together. I overestimated 40 people, preferring to bring too much than not enough,  and not knowing who all was out of town. Anyways, so Friday I got all the ingredients (excluding one that I had frozen from Peru), and should have budgetted better.

So Saturday I started prepping stuff... I made the dessert, and got other things prepared that would help things go faster today. My roommate helped me out some too.

So Sunday, after meeting with my small group of girls, I rushed home to get things moving, only having a little over 4 hours to have everything ready. Enough time, right? I began cooking the chicken, then my roommate came home and I was able to delegate some important chopping. Things were moving, but there was still a lot to be done. One friend came over to fix our outside porch light, and ended up helping us more, another friend dropped by for a little as well to help. All looked well, it seemed like we were going to get it all done and make it in time for life group. I was hoping to make it there with everything ready, so I could also sit in and participate in the meeting. It was going well until the pot with the rice, a very essential part of this "chicken with rice" meal started to let out a thick white smoke. Long story short, 3 pounds of half-way cooked rice with peas, carrots, and red peppers (previously chopped) along with the green mixture of cilantro, spinach, beer, and garlic (that was simmering in the rice) was ALL RUINED!!! We still had another pound of rice cooking in another pot, but that wasn't going to feed everyone! 

We got everything else ready to go, my roommate ran to the store, and picked up some essential items to remake some rice at the Branch's (where we meet for lifegroup). I took a look at the other pot of rice that I had cooking. Pot #2 ALL RUINED!!!!!  I rushed on over to lifegroupt to get started. The second batch of the rice, that we'd end up eating was not what it should have been, but there was no more time to make it right, only time to make it, a small taste of what it could be.

The positive: no one there had eaten this Peruvian dish, they wouldn't know differently.

The negative: I would

I was very frustrated.... several times I had to hold back the tears. On my way over to the Branch's, I thought about what God could be teaching me. Probably not to be so perfectionistic, also to remind me I wasn't in control, and probably another lesson of letting things go. 

Oh if only I had. Not only were Pots# 1 & 2 ruined, but so was my mood and mindset for the rest of the night. I have felt a funk coming on anyways, this just helped it spiral on down. I stayed late and attempted being social, but was so brainblocked by the 2 long days spent in the kitchen on a meal that came out to me only half what it could've been. 

As I cleaned the monstrous mess in the kitchen when I got back home, I thought of how the rice parallels creation. In the first pots were the ingredients for the right recipe, then it became ruined, and the following pot of rice served was only a taste, a glimpse of something that resembled what it should be like. The beauty that we do have here on earth is only a glimpse of something that resembles the new creation, what awaits us in eternity. (where rice is NEVER ruined!)  ;-)