food

Quality prayer is a lot like quality french toast

One of the go-to breakfasts I cook for my daughter is french toast.* It’s easy to make, it can be prepared in advance so that it can be cooked quickly, and, when made with a quality whole-grain bread, it’s a relatively healthy breakfast, combining just enough protein, carbohydrates, and fat to get my daughter through the first part of her day. Also, she likes it so there is never any complaining or procrastinating first thing in the morning when it’s time to eat. 

This morning, as I was prepping the french toast so that I could cook it when she woke up, it occurred to me that, in some ways, french toast is a lot like prayer. I know that sounds silly, and maybe it is, but it made sense to me at 5:30am. So please bear with me. 

French toast, is something that, if you want a good result, cannot be rushed. While the actual cooking of the french toast is a rather quick endeavor, prepping the french toast itself takes time. If you don’t allow the bread enough time to soak, the custard mixture will merely coat the bread superficially, instead of penetrating to the center, and the end result will be dry and unpleasant. 

In the same way, prayer takes time. Our time with God cannot be rushed if we want a good result. If we do not allow ourselves sufficient time in prayer, the Holy Spirit may only enter us superficially, instead of penetrating to our hearts, and our prayer life will feel dry and unpleasant as a result. 

In order to make french toast, you have to plan ahead. You can’t simply throw together french toast at the time you want to cook it and expect it to turn out the way you want. Good french toast requires some, albeit not much, amount of planning. 

Prayer, too, requires planning. This doesn’t mean that our prayers can’t or shouldn’t be spontaneous. Spontaneous prayer is wonderful. Any time we pray it is a good thing. But it is also important that we plan out time to pray, that we set aside time for God, and that we set and keep a schedule for and with him. If we don’t make our time for prayer a priority, the world will always find a way to prioritize itself for us. 

Good french toast requires bread that has the right amount of porousness and integrity. The bread has to be porous enough that, when we put it in the with the wet ingredients, it absorbs as much of the custard as possible. But it also has to be firm enough that it doesn’t simply fall apart once it is saturated. 

Likewise, in order for us to have a fruitful prayer life, we must have the right amount of porousness and integrity. We must be open enough to let God into our hearts, as well as pliable enough for him to do his work in us and to change us into who he wants us to be. But we also need to be strong and upright enough to stand up for the values he instills in us, and to live in the way that he commands. 

Like french toast, prayer takes time, planning, openness, and integrity. Without these ingredients in place, we may end up with something that resembles prayer, but the quality of it may not be what we desire. With these ingredients in place, however, we have a good recipe for making ourselves available for God to do his work in us in a way that is pleasing for both us and him. 

*For anyone wondering, here is a recipe for french toast that I use often and my daughter seems to like it:

INGREDIENTS (serves 2-3 people)
– Four slices of quality semi-stale whole grain bread
-Two large or three medium eggs
-Almond milk (or whatever milk you prefer) in an amount equal to the amount of liquid eggs
-1tsp each cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom
-Olive oil
-Maple syrup (the real stuff)

PREPARATION
-The night before, mix the wet ingredients in a sealable container
-Add the bread
-Flip the bread around in the custard mixture until all slices of bread are coated on all sides (you may have to do this more than once)
-Seal the container and place it in the refrigerator overnight

COOKING
-Place a medium sized non-stick pan on the stove
-Turn on burner to medium-high
-Once the pan is hot, add just enough olive oil to coat the pan
-Add the custard-soaked toast to the pan
-Cook on both sides
-Serve with maple syrup
-Pray
-Enjoy

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Don’t yuck someone else’s yum

I once asked my wife how she learned to eat chicken feet, something I have never developed a taste for. She said, “When I was growing up, we had three generations living in our home and, in my country, the oldest people eat first and the youngest people eat last. If we had chicken for dinner, my grandmother took the pieces she wanted first, then my parents took the pieces they wanted, and the kids ate whatever was left. So we learned to eat every part of the chicken and, unlike here, we didn’t just buy chicken pieces. We bought and cooked the whole chicken. From the head to the feet with everything in between, nothing went to waste. I learned to eat everything because I had to. It’s all we had.” 

Hearing this was not only enlightening, but also humbling. It made me realize how easy I truly had it growing up. Not only did we generally get to eat food that we liked, albeit within reason, but we also had such an absurd surplus of food that we never really felt the burden of having to eat anything we didn’t like out of necessity or threat of going hungry. We could afford to be picky and, with junk foods, snack foods, and frozen foods abound, our cupboards reflected this fact. 

My wife, on the other hand, having grown up in post-genocide Cambodia, had way fewer options. Her family shopped, cooked, and ate, first and foremost, for survival. One chicken had to make multiple dishes, feed multiple generations, and had to last across multiple meals. They cooked and ate every part, perhaps grilling the legs and wings, making a stir-fry with the diced up breast meat, and making soup with the thighs, feet, neck, head, and the carcass. Even the organs and the blood were cooked and eaten. 

The more I thought about this, the more spoiled and insulated I began to feel. It wasn’t a sense of guilt or even shame, as I knew that I did not choose to grow up where I did, how I did, with the family I had, and the luxury to choose my food from day to day and meal to meal. We were each born into the worlds we were born into and we only knew what we knew. Rather, she helped me to understand just how little I knew about the world outside of my own culture and upbringing. 

Now, whenever I see someone eating something I don’t eat or wasn’t exposed to growing up, instead of judging or criticizing it, I take a moment to think about what my wife said when I asked her how she learned to eat chicken feet. Even though my mom encouraged us to try different things, I think about how there are entire cultures and customs that I simply don’t understand because of how I was brought up. But most of all, I am reminded, as my daughter says, “Not to ‘yuck’ someone else’s ‘yum,'” because you have no idea what life circumstances led them to develop the tastes and preferences they now have.

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The vessel matters

One of my wife and my favorite things to eat on a cold, winter day is a Korean stew called gamja-tang. Gamja-tang is a spicy potato and pork neck-bone stew cooked and served in a hot stone bowl. The pork neck-meat is tender and succulent, the potato is soft and creamy, and the broth is spicy, rich, and full of umami.

Ever since we first got married, one of our weekend rituals, especially during the colder months, has been to go to the Korean market for groceries, and to get gamja-tang and sushi for lunch. Over the years, the markets we go to have changed, and, as our life together has gotten more full, the frequency we go on these dates has become more sparse, but even after fifteen years, groceries and gamja-tang remains one of our favorite ways to get away and spend time together.

Most often, we prefer to sit down and eat together in the little food court of the grocery store. However, there have been occasions when, for one reason or another, we took our food to go. But whenever we have gotten takeout, the soup never tastes the same and we cannot figure out why.

The gamja-tang we take home looks exactly the same as the gamja-tang we eat in the restaurant. It has the same ingredients and the quantities are the same. The taste, however, is different. It’s less rich, less flavorsome, and lacks that unami deliciousness it has when we eat it on-site. The best we can figure, the bowl the stew is served in is what makes the difference between the eat-in and the takeout versions.

When gamja-tang is cooked, it’s cooked directly over the fire in a stone bowl. This bowl is then placed on a small, stone platter and served to customers in the same vessel it was cooked in. When gamja-tang is ordered to-go, however, the stew is transferred out of the bowl it was cooked in and into a plastic takeout container. Since the only real difference between eating gamja-tang in the food court and eating it at home is the container it is served in, we have to assume that this is the cause for the noticeable difference in flavor.

In my many years spent as a coffee drinker, barista, and espresso machine repair technician, I have observed this same phenomenon with coffee. When coffee is served in a ceramic cup, it tastes different than when it is served in a glass, paper, or plastic cup. I don’t know why, but it just does. Apparently, the vessel matters.

The same principle seems to apply to us. As much as we don’t want it to be the case, and as unfair as it may seem, how we present ourselves, how we dress, groom, and carry ourselves, plays a large role in how we are perceived and received by the world. This is especially true when we are trying to carry a message to others.

We all want to be loved and accepted as we are and for who we are, but there is only one who has ever truly loved us unconditionally in this way. That one is God, the God who knew us before he formed us in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5), the God to whom nothing is hidden (Hebrews 4:13), and the God to whom we will return to answer for our lives in death (Romans 14:10-12). This same God who knows us better than we know ourselves (Psalm 139:1-4) also loves us beyond our comprehension or deserving (Romans 5:6-8).

God loves us for who we are, but everyone else has conditions and expectations. For this reason, how we present ourselves matters. The container matters. Our outward appearance doesn’t define us or make us any more or less loved by God, for God’s love is perfect, but whether we like it or not, it does affect how we are perceived and received by the world. Much like Korean stew or espresso, changing the container changes perception. So if we want to be taken seriously, if we want our message to be heard, we have to look like we are serious and deserve to be listened to.

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

My wife hit me with an egg

While I was making pancakes for my daughter, my wife hit me with an egg. Well, that’s not exactly how it happened. My wife and I were both in the kitchen this morning, rushing around, getting our daughter ready for school, my wife ready for work, and myself ready to go visit my mom in the hospital. I was making pancake batter for my daughter’s breakfast. She likes the pumpkin pancake mix from Trader Joe’s. Today, I mashed up an over-ripe banana in it just to mix things up and so I didn’t have to throw it away, but I digress. 

As I gathered the ingredients for the pancake batter, I saw that my wife was getting something out of the refrigerator. I asked her to grab me an egg because the pancake recipe called for one. She got one out of the egg bin, reached over to hand it to me, and just as she did, I turned toward her, the egg and my elbow meeting at just the right time and angle for the egg to go crashing to the floor. 

For about thirty seconds, we both blamed each other for the mess and then it turned to joking. As my wife cleaned up the egg on the floor, which I think I thanked her for doing but will thank her for later just to be sure, I mixed the pancake batter and proceeded to make my daughter’s breakfast. In spite of the whirlwind of chaos, my daughter got to school on time, my wife made it to the office, and I drove out to the other side of the beltway to meet up with my brother who was acting as my mom’s caretaker for the day, and to see my mom. 

As I sat in a local coffee shop writing, reading, and waiting for the message that my mom was out of surgery, my wife called to ask if I needed any help getting our daughter home from school later. We talked over our plans for the day and both agreed that, if the other needed anything, we would be there to help, eggs in hand. We both laughed at the beautiful chaos that is our life. 

Some days things feel like they are going perfectly. Everything runs smoothly, we are on time, and it feels like nothing can stand in our way. The wind is at our backs, all the traffic lights are green, and the life just seems to fall into place. But other days, in spite of our best intentions and preparation, nothing seems to go right. We feel hurried, clumsy, and like nothing we do is working out. We oversleep, argue, we hit all of the red lights, and we drop the eggs. 

What I try to keep in mind is that God is ultimately in charge of all of this. Of course, we play our part. We have free will and God doesn’t make us do anything we don’t want to do. On the other hand, nothing happens in this world outside of God’s will, either his perfect will or his permissive will. Whether life seems to be going well or poorly, it is all being divinely orchestrated by a God who loves us. He is writing a divine love story for us, even if we don’t understand it from moment-to-moment or day-to-day. 

We don’t always know the plan. We can’t always see the bigger picture. We are asked to trust, to have faith, and to walk forward into the dark unknown on a promise, a promise that God loves us and will not fail us. In faith, God allows us to walk across the stormy waters toward him, but even when our faith falters, when the winds and the waves frighten us and we begin to feel like we are drowning, if we call out to him, he will reach out his hand to pull us up out of the depths (Matthew 14:22-33). 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

French toast and self doubt

This morning, as I was making my daughter breakfast before seeing her off to school, I started to doubt myself as a parent. All of these questions and doubts started to creep in. 

Am I doing this right? What if I get it wrong? Is this food healthy enough for her? Is she getting enough protein so she will get stronger? Is she getting enough carbs for energy? Is she getting too many carbs for the amount of exercise she does? Is she getting too many calories? Or too few?

All of these thoughts were racing through my mind at 6:30am while I was making my daughter french toast and an omelette. The french toast was something my wife had prepped in the refrigerator from leftover bagels we picked up on a recent trip to New Jersey to visit family, and the omelette was just a plain egg omelette.

Then, the thought came to me, “Junk food was basically it’s own food group when you were a kid and you are worried about your daughter’s macronutrients. You are probably doing okay by her.” Standing there in the kitchen by myself, I audibly chuckled.

Life can be extremely serious at times, but there is no reason to make it unnecessarily serious when it need not be. French toast and an omelette is a pretty darn good breakfast. It’s tasty, relatively healthy, and it’s mostly real food.

Yes, macronutrients are important. Of course, whole foods are better than processed foods. But also, we do the best we can with what we have to work with. Life is hard enough without beating myself up unnecessarily for french toast and eggs. 

Chili humility

Recently, my wife took her parents to the Cambodian Buddhist Temple for a fundraiser. At the event, local Cambodian and Thai food vendors set up to raise money to donate to the temple through food sales. My wife came back with some of my favorite foods, including green papaya salad, chicken wings stuffed with Cambodian herbs, spices, and chopped peanuts, and fried bananas, which I really appreciated after a long day running and participating in a jiu-jitsu scrimmage for grapplers over forty. 

My mother-in-law brought home some produce, including a small, green bitter eggplant (turkey berry) that is used in a variety of Cambodian and Thai dishes, but she specifically uses it in one of my favorite Cambodian dishes, prahok ling. Prahok ling is essentially ground pork, fermented fish paste (prahok), herbs and spices (kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass, turmeric, etc), bird’s eye chilis, and turkey berries all stir-fried together. 

The dish is served with jasmine rice, raw vegetables such as cabbage, carrots, and green beans, and lime wedges. The prahok ling is either eaten over the rice with the veggies as an accompaniment, or the veggies are used to scoop up the prahok ling and it is all eaten together. The lime is there in case someone wants to add some acid to the dish, which I always do because I like the salty, spicy, bitter, and sour combination. 

Before we started eating, my mother-in-law warned me that there were whole bird’s eye chilis in the dish. At first, I ate around them, but then I got brave and I took a bite with a piece of chili in it. It was delicious and not too spicy. I finished what I had with the remainder of the chili and I decided to have some more. 

This time, bravery turning into arrogance, I took a couple of chilis into my bowl. I chopped the chilis up with my spoon, mixed them around in the prahok ling, squeezed some lime on it, and started eating. After my first couple of bites, I realized that something was very different. These chilis were not like the last one. My mouth was on fire and I could feel my belly starting to get warm. 

I told wife that I think I made a mistake and everyone started laughing. They know, and I know but had forgotten in a state of prideful ignorance and hunger, that not all bird’s eye chilis are created equal. Even in the same batch, they can range from a pleasant, fruity heat to regretfully spicy. I had just eaten the spectrum and now I needed to reevaluate my situation. 

Humbled and happy to give everyone a reason to laugh, I began separating the chilis from the rest of my food and enjoyed the remainder of my meal. It was not only delicious, but it was also very nice to have a sit-down, home-cooked meal with my wife, daughter, and in-laws. These occasions used to be an everyday occurrence for us because we all lived together for many years, but now that we live apart, it is more rare, and so we appreciate it when it happens. A temporarily burnt mouth and bruised ego are a small price to pay for delicious food and good company. 

Save the best for last

…or enjoy it while you can? 

In my home growing up, each person was given their own plate of pre-portioned food at dinnertime. 

When there was food on my plate that I liked, I would often save it for last, eating the vegetables first, anticipating the reward of eating the best food at the end. 

In my wife’s home, they ate family style, where all of the food was presented in the middle of the table for everyone to share. 

Since everyone in my wife’s family was eating the same food at the same time, if she tried to save what she liked for later, it was often eaten before she ever had the chance to enjoy it. 

On our second date, I experienced a bit of culture shock. We were eating dinner together and she saw that, having finished the rest of my meal, I had one single shrimp left on my plate. Suddenly, she reached across with her chopsticks, snatched my shrimp, and ate it. 

I looked at her in shock as she laughed, enjoying the shrimp I had been saving. 

It took me a while to get the joke, but life is short. Enjoy it while you can. You never know when someone will steal your shrimp.