I recently discovered the magic of good cookware.
For years, I was the wife who picked up the cheap baking sheets or the inexpensive non-stick pans and pots in the grocery store. And then wondered why a year later why they “weren’t working right,” ie., burning everything or cooking unevenly, or flecking and deteriorating (part of this does have to do with my ability to cook but that is a WHOLE other posting for another day).
But during my time living at the inlaws, I did manage to learn a few lessons, and one of those was that when it comes to cookware, you get what you pay for – and how you take care of it matters too.
Most of the time I was content to throw baking sheets, pots, pans, anything in the dishwasher – mainly because I was too lazy to take the five minutes to wash them. If you’re smarter than me (and judging from my recent Facebook post regarding spaghetti squash, most of you are), you already know that dishwashing detergent can scratch and mess up a nice pan or baking sheet.
So under my mother-in-law’s patient tutelage (and sometimes direct threats – “Do NOT put this in the dishwasher!!”) I’ve learned that you can actually keep cookware and bakeware for more than a year. But you have to start with good quality, and then good care.
The other day, I brought home a few new pieces of Watkins bakeware and when I got ready to make cornbread muffins, I was faced with a choice. Muffin cups – or no muffin cups? I usually always play it safe and use paper muffin cups mainly because the cheap pans I’ve always used would cause the cornbread to stick or burn. But I decided to go for it – and voila – I had beautiful mini corn muffins with no real mess!
See what a great pan can do?
So this got me thinking….
In what other ways or other areas of our lives have we settled for the cheap imitation? What have we accepted as ok just because it’s fast or easy or cheap?
We accept Facebook friendships because there’s no real commitment and we can just as quickly “unfriend” someone as become someone’s friend.
We fill our freezers with microwaveable meals because we’re too tired or too lazy to cook. And our waistlines show it.
We let our kids hang out on electronics all day instead of making them play outside (the street our house is on is currently a ghost town. There were more kids playing outside during the school year then now that it’s summer).
I’m working on a yard sale we’re having this weekend , getting rid of a bunch of stuff we’ve gone through since moving into our house. I hope to blog about this and share some tips – I’m a nerd when it comes to yard sales – probably my inner kid who always wanted to own a store coming out to play.
What if we could get rid of some of those cheap imitations we’ve allowed to take up residence in our lives, as easily as we put stuff in a yard sale?
We can, when we follow and imitate what’s real.
Check out 3 John, verse 11 – “Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.”
There’s a lot of imitations out there today, trying to sell us on what will make us instantly happy.
But at what cost? To our families? To our marriages? To ourselves?
I shared this verse with my son yesterday as we were talking about the importance of God and family (his 11-year-old mind was having trouble understanding how God should come first before Mom or Dad).
John 14:6 reads, “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
The only way as wives and moms that we can discern the true from the fake in our world today is by reading and studying God’s Word daily.
Accept no cheap imitation.
