Compromises Can Be a Good Thing

Over the years I've enjoyed making up, or adapting different recipes. It all started back when I was five or six years old.

I remember I was sitting in front of the TV shredding bread into a bowl. Don't ask me why, I was watching Julia Child and knew I couldn't just throw them away so I made up a recipe to use them. I looked in the fridge and pulled out cheese, onions. and my mom suggested I add some eggs and milk. It tasted pretty good. I remember writing the recipe down and naming it something like "Dorthea's favorite breakfast" and writing, "if you don't have eggs, you can use strawberries". I don't know if my mom still has that page in her cookbook, but I know it was there for long and I made it more than once while growing up.

A few years back, when it was I was living in a more remote part of Nigeria and rarely had cheese I sometimes made "Mbamba Pizza". I was living in Mbamba at the time so it was just pizza with no cheese. It was certainly better than no pizza at all! I'm sure the Italians have there own name for it, but I like mine.

Then there were "Breakfast Cookies". My kids never had time for breakfast when they were little. They just ran out to play as soon as they were awake. Living at the seminary in Mbamba, our neighbors were early risers and so were the kids. As they ran out the door I'd shout, "At least take a cookie or two!" They were oatmeal cookies with reduced sugar and peanut butter so I figured they were better than a bowl of oatmeal, especially since I made them on the big size.

The other day I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and the kids gobbled them up in less than a day. (Good thing I hid a few so Amson could get some when he returned home from some travels the next day.) A few days later when I asked Daniel what kind of cookies I should make , he wanted the same ones and agreed "no chips" would be fine. While making them, I remembered that Grandpa Paul's favorite cookies were chocolate chip, but he always looked for ones with few or no chips so now I have a new cookie, "Grandpa Paul's Cookies".

I find that I'd rather have a compromised recipe than not make what is on my mind. Learning to make a compromise can be a good thing. One of the few lessons I remember from high school was about compromise. Miss Lancaster taught us survival tips and her theme was to find a compromise if you don't have exactly what you need. I guess that's what I did with most of these recipes. I found a compromise. I'd say that lesson has served me well and helped me to survive over twenty years in Nigeria. Having some kind of pizza, and cookies certainly helped. Did I mention my ice cream substitute????