Time for another installment in this series. Usual disclaimer here that these posts are mostly for my kids and if others get something from them, great. Stuff I know #12 is.....You have to follow the directions. You just do.
My daughter loves chocolate chip cookies. More specifically she loves the chocolate chip cookies that I make in triple batch quantities from a recipe in my grandmother's old Betty Crocker cookbook. It was one of the first recipes she learned how to make on her own.
Well one day she and her friend decided they were going to make some cookies. The only problem was that when they got started, they accidentally put triple the amount of salt into the dough. Fortunately, they realized it before they baked the cookies and at that point they had 2 choices. They could either triple-triple the batch or they could throw everything away and start over.
In all honesty, I don't remember what they chose to do but the point is that whether it's making chocolate chip cookies from scratch, putting together a quilt, doing some canning, or even parenting....you have to follow the directions. There are no shortcuts and it you want the end result to be what you envision, then you have to follow the directions.
Sometimes those directions take more time and effort than you want to put into the process. Then you have a couple of choices just like my daughter and her friend. You can either start over, or you can do what you have to do to fix it. Have you noticed, though, that it's the things that take more time and effort that are worth it? My husband's grandmother was a really good cook and she very rarely used a written recipe. She made cookies and sweet rolls and they all seemed to take a while to accomplish. It was those things that her family enjoyed eating most. If you take the easy way and decide not to put the effort in, you may not get what you want. You might get an approximation, but it's not the real thing.
You get that this can all be extrapolated out beyond simple food analogies, right? This walks hand-in-hand with Stuff I Know #11....that some things are worth sweating.
You can't make a quilt that looks nice if your blocks are different sizes and shapes when they're supposed to match up uniformly. You can't make good chocolate chip cookies if you triple the salt. You can't bottle stuff for your family and expect it to be safe to eat if you don't follow those guidelines, and you can't expect the bigger things in life to fall into place unless you follow those directions, either.
Sure, there are shortcuts, just like there are shortcuts that can be used for making cookies, and they can be fine, but you have to think about what you really want....if you're willing to settle for fine, or if you want the real thing. For cookies it might work out OK. For influencing kids, maybe you want to think twice about that.
I always love your 'stuff I know' posts! Thank you for sharing your wisdom so frankly and lovingly!
Posted by: your favorite son's wife | October 22, 2015 at 10:36 AM
Yep, yep, yep!
Posted by: Lil Sis | October 25, 2015 at 06:54 AM