experimental

Today I am doing some experimental cooking ready to feed some friends tomorrow. I do not normally experiment with food for friends, however these friends have volunteered to be my guinea pigs. Next weekend we are cooking for our church's youth weekend. If you are a praying type please pray for this, it will be a real test of my health. The weekend is the reason for the experimental cooking. We will be making some things that we have not made before. One of these is chocolate crunch, which I remember from school dinners but the husband has no recollection of so I don't know if it's just a Suffolk schools things. One of the other things is sponge cake. Now I have made sponge cake many many times before. This time, however, is different. This time we are making it with a packet mix. It is a catering packet mix to which you just add water and whisk. Making the experiment one made me feel a bit dirty. I have never made any kind of cake from a packet before. I was taught as a child how to make cakes from real ingredients, and that is the only way I have ever done it. I am used to taking time to make things, to craft them, to work on them, to put something of myself in them. It's what we used to call when I was younger 'made with love'. So to open a packet, add water and mix just felt wrong. It felt like a quick fix for something that should be created with care, that should have time spent on it. I'm the same with craft things, I like to create a card from scratch, not use card kits that are a bit like the card making version of painting by numbers. And it has led me to wonder, why when I like to spend time on things, making them the best I possibly can, do I look for quick fixes for the CFS. Why do I not accept that that is something that I need to spend time on, crafting a well doofas. I want the just add water and mix fix. The just add water and mix makes an ok cake, but it's nothing in comparison to the cake that has been crafted, had time spent it, the one that's made with love. Maybe I need to start making more of my health with love.