Browsing Tag: lemons to lemonade

My mom is a not-so-great cook.  She’s told me she doesn’t like cooking, and it’s not intuitive to her.  It’s a task to be done and not something she enjoys. Growing up I loved to eat at other people’s houses because their food had a lot of flavor, and I would come home raving about the food.  She patiently ignored me and I don’t know if she felt bad about my comments.  On the other hand, I have always loved to cook.  As a kid I read cookbooks like novels.  I got a feel for what spices and herbs went with what meats and vegetables. To me, cooking is a pleasure and an art and something I thoroughly enjoy.

After my parents divorced my mom went back to work and she eventually went back to school full-time too. But, before my parents divorced, my mom usually made us breakfast.  We often had Cream of Wheat and no matter how she tried she couldn’t make it without lumps in it.  Not just little lumps but some pretty big ones too.  She called them “hidden treasures” and for a long time I thought that was how it was supposed to be made.  They were chewy lumps that surprisingly added something to the hot cereal.  I have thought over the years about how she made Cream of Wheat with lumps in it, but somehow made it an adventure to eat it by calling it hidden treasures.  Kind of like turning lemons into lemonade.

There’s a lot of things in life that I’m not great at doing or that for some reason don’t turn out right.  There are some talents that I will never have but will have to do anyway, just like my mom had to cook for us.  The lesson of the “hidden treasures” shows me that I can make these situations an adventure that can make life more fun.  I too can turn lemons into lemonade because sometimes the lumps are going to be there no matter what I do so I might as well enjoy them.  The funny thing is that even though I can easily make Cream of Wheat without any lumps at all, I kind of miss those hidden treasures.