Month: April 2023

Easy Open! (Angel in the Kitchen)

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There’s this funny comedy sketch from the old Carol Burnett Show, in which Carol’s character enters her kitchen with several bags of groceries. She’s hungry and she’s looking forward to snacking on some of the treats she just purchased. Unfortunately, she can’t get any of the bags, boxes or cans opened! Over the next 5 minutes, she struggles in vain to get into various packages, and toward the end succeeds only in opening a gash in her thumb! She hurries to apply a band-aid, but … she can’t get into the protective sterile wrapper!

Have you ever experienced anything like this? We have. That is, one of us routinely struggles with opening kitchen items! Yes, one of us is container challenged! A bottle of cola? We need a pair of pliers to unscrew the top! A bag of chips: we need heavy-duty kitchen shears. And you know those wide-mouthed caps that come on those huge plastic bottles of laundry detergent — the caps that double as “wash load” measuring cups — we still haven’t quite figured out that one!

Once, we got this plastic tub of little frozen cream puffs, and we had to read the opening instructions three times before we figured out what the manufacturer was telling us. We located this nearly imperceptible indentation along the edge of the container, and (according to the label) needed to pry up near this indentation in order to “break loose” a tab. Once the tab broke loose, all we had to do was lift the lid at that corner. One big problem: we couldn’t get the plastic to break! We had to go to the garage and get a screwdriver, and then spent several aggravating moments digging and twisting into the edge of the plastic lid. Maybe the real  “cream puffs” were outside the box!

Sometimes we wonder if the engineers who design these cans, bottles, boxes and bags aren’t enjoying a private little joke at our expense. Then we remind ourselves that consumer goods are supposed to be hard to open — and there are good reasons why! Manufacturers want to protect their consumers, for one. They don’t want shoppers easily opening a can of mixed nuts in the aisle at Walmart to see if they’re salty enough to suit their tastes — or to simply satisfy a sudden snack attack — and then putting the container back on the shelf. Manufacturers want to protect their products from being consumed, contaminated, pilfered, and possibly even poisoned! (Yes, that actually happened a couple decades ago.)

Furthermore, cleaning fluids and over-the-counter drugs labeled as “childproof” need to be just that: impervious to the curiosity and tenacity of industrious little kids! The downside of “safe and secure” packaging is that it makes it really tough for some of us to get into a bag of cookies or a box of crackers! We’re all for safety, but does everything have to be so hard to get into?!?!

Grrrr–struggle, struggle–ggrrrrrrr! Oops!

Well, not everything in life is hard to get into. In fact, there’s at least two things we can think of that were actually designed to be easy to get into: the Family of God and, by extension, the Kingdom of Heaven. These two things aren’t even childproof! Jesus said, “…Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:3 Berean Study Bible)

The instructions for getting into God’s Family are easy to follow. It’s all outlined in the Word of God — and our Heavenly Father even made getting into His Word easy! The Gospel of Salvation through Christ is simple enough that even a child can understand it, because God wants everyone to have easy access to Him.

We may have trouble opening a can of spam, but opening our Bibles is a breeze! We may have trouble getting into a bag of chips, but getting into God’s Spiritual Family is a cinch: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name….” (John 1:12 NASB)

Want God to open the way for you? Just follow these “EASY OPEN” instructions: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved..” (Roman 10:9 NLT)

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Bon Appétit! (Encouragement for Creators)

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Innovative people have always had their fair share of critics: “It’ll NEVER work!”; “It’ll never FLY!”; “It’ll never FLOAT!”; “It’ll never stay SUBMERGED!” Anyone who knows their history, has learned to NEVER say “Never”! Still, many of us, as creators, are on the receiving end of the “No can do” attitudes and criticisms of certain agents, editors, publishers, financiers, and other assorted people who choose to see all the obstacles to any given project or goal. For your encouragement, we’ll now share the story of a creator and her naysayers. And since we’ve been discussing cookbooks in our Angel in the Kitchen series, we’ve chosen as our subject, the late Julia Child, who wrote one of the most influential cookbooks of the 20th Century.

Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California, on August 15, 1912. Although she’s Internationally recognized as a multiple award-winning chef, author and television personality — as well as THE person who introduced and popularized French cooking in America — she attained none of this notoriety until she’d reached the ripe age of 51. Late bloomer? Some things are worth waiting for.

Many of us remember Julia Child as the elderly and unassuming French chef with the unusual voice that seemed to warble. It’s interesting to learn that as a teenager, the six-foot, two-inch-tall Julia participated in sports while attending Smith College, and was an avid basketball player. She graduated from Smith in 1934 with a BA in English. Her career in cooking was still decades away. Long before she was “The French Chef,” she moved to New York City and worked as a copywriter for the advertising department of a firm that marketed upscale home furnishings. She returned to California
in 1937 and spent the next four years writing for local publications.

During World War II, Child tried to enlist, in both the WACs (Women’s Army Corp) and the U.S. Navy’s WAVES, but was rejected for being “too tall”! So, Child joined the famed OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and worked her way up from typist, to a top-secret researcher. While working in the Secret Intelligence division, Child had a variety of jobs that took her to Washington, D.C., Sri Lanka (Ceylon), and eventually to China. But her most interesting assignment may have been as the assistant to a research team developing shark repellent! The foul-tasting stuff was needed to keep sharks from exploding mines intended for German U-boats. So how in the world did Julia Child end up as the last word on French cuisine?

While in Ceylon, she met fellow OSS employee and New Jersey native Paul Cushing Child. The two were married in 1946, and moved to Paris, two years later, when Paul was given an assignment there by the US State Department. Julia’s hubby was an artist, a poet, and a gourmet, and he introduced her to fine French cuisine — which she repeatedly described as a culinary revelation: “an opening up of the soul and spirit for me.”

While in Paris, Julia attended the famous cooking school Le Cordon Bleu, and later studied with several master chefs. She also met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, two French women who were trying to write a French cookbook for American readers. They quickly convinced Julia “the English major” to collaborate with them. That was around 1951, and the three cookbook creators spent the next decade researching and repeatedly testing recipes. Child translated the French into English, and worked to make the recipes detailed and interesting to American cooks. Finally, their book was finished. All they needed to do was find a New York publisher. Piece of cake?

The three authors were told repeatedly that their 726-page manuscript was “too long”! Other objections included: “No one’s interested in preparing gourmet food”; “No one’s buying cookbooks these days”; “If someone wants a recipe, they’ll just tear it out of a magazine”! When a door finally opened, and Houghton-Mifflin signed them to a contract, the editors then rejected the manuscript because it seemed too much like an encyclopedia.

Alfred A. Knopf Company ultimately published Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961. It was a critically-acclaimed bestseller, and it’s still in print to this day. More books followed, as well as a long-running television show. And would you believe, the kitchen set, where for years Julia Child cooked up special dishes for her legions of viewers, is now permanently exhibited in the Smithsonian.

So, all her naysayers had to eat crow — and at the end of each episode of The French Chef, Julia would say, “Bon appétit!”

“And the LORD answered me: Write the vision; make it plain…. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; …If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come.” (Habakkuk 2:2-3 ESV)

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