" For so long, I viewed shortcuts as a form of cheating, but what if shortcuts are actually a form of grace?"
“ I’ m gonna watch da muffins bake,” she tells me. The boys are at basketball practice tonight, which means we’ ve got the whole house to ourselves. Per Presley’ s request, our girls’ night agenda includes baking, watching Beauty and the Beast, and painting our nails. Before we move on to the movie and manicure portion of our evening, I return the vegetable oil to the cabinet, put the carton of eggs back in the fridge, load the mixing bowl and spatula into the dishwasher, and finally, toss the cardboard box that once held the muffin mix into the recycling bin. It’ s the last step that haunts me for a second. The box mix. The short-cut. The scam. A trace of guilt flickers in my chest as a tiny voice in the back of my head reminds me: Good mothers bake from scratch.
I swat the lie away, but it comes right back like a boomerang, ready for a debate. Obviously real bananas are superior to a packet of powder, nutritionally speaking, but the aesthetics win, too. Baking from scratch involves a multitude of steps, kitchen gadgets and tools, visible remnants of flour and sugar smeared across the counter. When you’ re done baking from scratch, you’ re left with a noticeable mess to clean up: evidence of your time, your energy, and of course, your love.
A box mix, on the other hand, is a quick fix. The drive-thru of culinary offerings. One bowl, one plastic pouch of beige powder, usually water or oil, and perhaps a single egg. In the end, there is no mess left behind. No evidence of time or energy or love. No evidence of anything at all. The batter practically makes itself. Like magic. Like... cheating.
" For so long, I viewed shortcuts as a form of cheating, but what if shortcuts are actually a form of grace?"
Ten years ago, maternity clothes and baby gear shuffled in and out of my house like library books. Back then, just as one friend would deliver a baby, someone else became pregnant. My inbox held a constant slew of baby shower invitations, registry links, and of course, Meal Train calendars. As a grateful recipient of two postpartum Meal Trains myself, I dutifully committed to bring dinner to every new mom in my orbit. And even though I had two little kids at home and could hardly put a nourishing dinner on my own table, I fulfilled every Meal Train sign-up by cooking from scratch: chopping, slicing, blending, pounding, frying, and occasionally almost burning whatever Pinterest recipe du jour I had printed that day. Sweaty and stressed, I’ d drop off the meal, then head back home to clean my disaster of a kitchen at peak witching hour, often before pouring bowls of cereal because I forgot— or was too exhausted— to double the ingredients.
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