My daughter called me the other night in tears. She was trying a new frosting recipe, it was not turning out well, and when she tried to fix it by adding more milk, it splattered all over her kitchen. She had already worked a full day, been to the grocery store, and baked cupcakes using special directions for baking at a high altitude. She was getting ready to have out-of-town guests, and she was exhausted. Since I live in a different city, all I could do was offer moral support and assure her that anyone who has ever cooked or baked, especially for someone else, has had a similar situation.
My daughter’s plight reminded me of one of the years that I was trying the Herculean task of serving a homemade pasta meal on Christmas Eve and a full turkey dinner on Christmas Day. On the morning of Christmas Eve, I found that something from the raw turkey, which was on the top shelf of the fridge, had leaked all the way down to the produce drawers at the bottom of the fridge. My main goal that year was simply not to make anyone sick. As I painstakingly cleaned the refrigerator piece by piece and threw away anything that was not sealed, I wondered how I had ever let myself get into that situation.
Sometimes there are solutions to these problems. Sometimes, however, one has to gracefully accept defeat and tell oneself that, in the future, it is okay to stop serving the homemade pasta dinner on Christmas Eve and start serving ham instead of turkey on Christmas Day. It is also perfectly acceptable to buy a tub of pre-made frosting.
I learned the lesson of gracefully accepting defeat in the kitchen when I was a teenager. My mother was getting ready to give one of her famous family/friend get-togethers, and she was making a layered jello mold. You might be imagining the typical red, white, and green mold that was popular in the 70’s, but no, this was an intricate layered mold which included several flavored jellos stacked one above another. It involved making a small amount of each flavor, pouring it into a glass casserole dish, and letting it solidify before adding the next layer. She also had to make sure that she let the newest layer cool enough in the measuring cup before pouring it onto the jelled layers so they stayed jelled. It was a tedious process, and she was well into it when she dropped the casserole dish. Luckily, it didn’t break, and we thought it was salvageable. It was okay until she dropped it a second time, and the force of the landing caused a rainbow of jello to fly through the air and land all over the floor. At first, neither of us said anything. It was one of those moments when you think, “Did that really just happen?” Finally, she said, “Well, I’ve already made a mess. I might as well finish the job,” and she took the liquid jello that was still in the measuring cup and poured it out on the floor. I howled with laughter. I think we laughed the whole time we cleaned up the mess. We still laugh about the time she poured the jello on the floor.
This is the perfect picture of gracefully accepting defeat in the kitchen. She could have been angry or sad. Instead, she made one of our best memories. Sometimes defeat is the best thing that can happen.