Thought for the week: Judy Clinton on everything in the kitchen sink
‘I set to work with a pot-scourer. It was hard going, and I wasn’t being very successful.’
The other day I burnt a saucepan dry, very dry. That was a shame: its contents would have made a very tasty sauce. Instead, I was presented with a black, acrid-smelling, cremated, chunky mess, giving me a nasty job to clear up – and no sauce.
I scraped what I could and put that in the bin, squirted washing-up liquid into the blackened pot and then poured hot water over that. I set to work with a pot-scourer. It was hard going, and I wasn’t being very successful. I suddenly remembered the old trick of soaking such disaster pans in a solution of concentrated bicarbonate of soda. This I did, and then I turned my attention to making another sauce, this time standing by it throughout the whole cooking time. I decided to leave the blackened saucepan to soak overnight in its solution.
The next morning I tipped out the dirty water. And lo and behold, I was able to wipe the saucepan clean in no time at all.
Lessons can be learnt from the simplest of things when I have the eyes to see them. The most obvious in this situation was how my lack of attention had caused the trouble in the first place. The second was that accidents and mistakes happen for all of us and are simply part of life: there is no need to get too upset about them.
But perhaps, for me, the most important lesson was the value of soaking: in this case, literally. And maybe a more general principle can be found here too. Sometimes things are best left alone for a while; muscling in with effort isn’t always the best way forward. Maybe it can be better to stop, wait, assess, and then find a more gentle, assisted, and infinitely easier way of correcting things.
I wonder whether prayer, or holding in the Light, as Friends say, is one form of soaking. Not a bad thing to remember next time I’ve had a mishap, whether another burnt saucepan or something rather more serious.
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