Forgiving Cookies

Forgiving Cookies peering out of a box

I am starting to really enjoy taking photographs of the food I cook. Finding just the right table-elements, just the right place in the house and just the right mix of flourescent and yellow light all add to the creative experience.

The photographs I take are forgiving when I tend to be exacting. So when the taste or the texture of the cookies fail to meet my *extremely high* expectations, I take *warm* comfort in seeing the food on metaphorical film, looking better than they taste. Self-deception? Or simply missing the point altogether, which should surely be the taste of the food rather than the way it looks?

I am the less deceived. Should cooking be aimed at the way the dish or baked-thing turned out in the end? Should the endeavour be written off as failed simply because it tasted average-ish, and was rife with imperfections? Not in my experience, no. Cooking, if it were to have any meaning for me at all, would be a pleasurable process, all about creation. My purpose in the kitchen will not be to insist on perfection from dough or batter, especially not first-time perfection. In the kitchen, I will set about learning about celebrating the process. There will be mistakes and mis-estimations, unexpected turn-outs and mishaps, but through it all, I will celebrate the process, and from thence derive as much joy as I possibly can.

And in the process, perhaps, just perhaps, I will learn about acceptance of situations and people just as we are, with all our imperfections. And in the process, perhaps I will learn, as I am learning with the baked-things, to see each person or situation as beautiful, God-revealed, through the eyes of grace that only God can give.