The Lasagna Lesson
I made lasagna from scratch the other night. It was an arduous process. It took 3 ½ hours. By the end both my sinks were filled with dishes. The recipe made 12 servings, though my family only consists of three. And my five-year-old daughter refused to try it. So here I am, three days later, eating leftovers, wondering why I spent so much time making it, when I could have bought a frozen Stouffer’s lasagna and it would have been so much easier. I’m lying here, watching TV, and I discover a piece of fennel stuck in my teeth. It’s from the lasagna. I remember buying that jar of fennel at Kroger for $4. I grab it with my tongue to swallow it, but I stop. I decide to chew up the tiny fennel seed instead.
This is when I figured out why I made the lasagna from scratch. It taught me something. Events in life are like the ingredients in a recipe. You can experience a meal pre-packaged and it may taste great, but you don’t know what went into it. So the joy stops when the last bite is taken. However, when you cook a meal, every piece of it has meaning- down to the last fennel seed. When you sail through life searching for the finish line, it’s like scarfing down a meal at a restaurant. All you care about is the end result. You wanna feel full. You forget what you’re doing. Cooking food helps me remember what I’m doing.
I guess I’m trying to say that it’s good to cook a meal from scratch sometimes. It makes you slow down and appreciate what’s happening around you. I spend most of my life trying to do everything faster and more efficiently. Cooking a 3 ½ hour meal was like a punch in the face to my frantic lifestyle. It was very frustrating and by the time I finished the lasagna, I didn’t even want to eat it. But three days later I have some perspective on the event.
I believe that all of these little things in our lives, if examined, can provide clues to what troubles us. The lasagna lesson for me was to slow down and stop trying to rush through life. What’s your Lasagna Lesson?
