Back to Scratch: Before the World Got All "Mixed" Up

Well, I'm in Poland with my family for the holidays. It's been 5 years since our whole family has been together for a Christmas, so it is quite special. =)

There are many things that I have been enjoying about being back in Poland. I'm enjoying many of the memories. Many things are just different from the states and it's nice to see things from a little bit different perspective again. One thing that is different is cooking. And not just what people fix here, but how they fix it. It's true that most Polish people fix different things that Americans do, but even when I am with my family and we are having the same things that people in the US have, things are done differently. Very little is done from mixes, or pre-prepared frozen food. No hot pockets or anything like that here, (which can be kind of sad sometimes). =( But things here are done mostly from scratch, and I enjoy that. Instead of just pulling out a cake mix from the pantry, reading the instructions on the back of the box, pouring in the mix, two eggs, and some water into a pan, sticking it in the oven, and Voilà! You have a cake. Instead of that, you pull out the old Betty Crocker's Cookbook, and put in the flower, milk, eggs, baking soda, sugar, butter, and chocolate all yourself, the old fashion way.

The other day I was like, "I want to make pancakes this morning." So what did I do? They don't sell pancake mixes here. =O I don't know how to make pancakes without a mix. So, I find the cookbook with the recipe and find the things that I need. Flower, sugar, baker soda, eggs, milk, water, salt, and butter. Mix it all together and start making some pancakes. They do sell maple syrup here now, but it is super expensive, so I made the syrup from scratch too. Well, almost from scratch. I didn't stick a faucet into a maple tree and drain its sap and make syrup from that, but I put 2 cups of sugar, and one cup of water into a pot and set it to boil. Then added some maple flavoring to it. It actually tastes really good. =) Took the pancakes, and the syrup and had a great breakfast.

Later, I made some hamburgers. Pulled the ground beef from the freezer that morning to give it time to thaw and when it was ready I threw it into a bowl along with some eggs, Worcestershire sauce, and other stuff. Formed the meat into patties and threw them on the skillet. We wanted cheese with our hamburgers so I pulled out the block of cheese, cut off the little bit of mold that was growing on the side, and sliced some cheese. Got the hamburger buns fresh from the bakery that day. Ended up with some very good burgers.
 
And then my brother and I wanted to try our hand and making stuffed crust pizza so we worked on that.  For the dough I got mom's help so that I would do everything the right way, making sure to add the ingredients in the right order and making sure to have the water at the right temperature so as to not kill the yeast, and all that. Once the dough was ready, I buttered and corn mealed the pans, separated the dough into the right amounts and laid it out on the pans. Then my brother and I stuffed the crusts of 2 of the pizzas with cheese, put on the sauce and spices and toppings (and we didn't skimp). After that, we put them in the oven and cleaned up the kitchen while they baked. When they were done, we pulled them out and called the family to dinner. The stuffed crust turned out pretty well, and the pizzas overall were absolutely amazing.
 
 

 I'm definitely enjoying the time here getting back to the basics. Back to the old fashion ways. Not just with cooking and food, other things too. Grandmothers riding their bikes to the store to pick up groceries, buying your vegetables from the old man at the corner, the many unpaved roads, the people with wood burning stoves, stuff like that. =) There's nothing wrong with cake mixes, or frozen pizzas, or hot pockets, but sometimes it's nice to shake things up a bit and see that even things that are the same are different in different areas of the planet.

Hope you are enjoying your Christmas almost as much as I am. ;-)

                                                                                                                                           Tim Petersen

Skewtruth Letters: Magnifying Small Restrictions

Preface to the Skewtruth Letters

This post is slightly different from a typical post. It is actually an extra credit assignment for one of my classes, Christian Masterworks. This post is an imitation of S.C. Lewis's book Screwtape Letters. Screwtape Letters is a series of letters written by a master demon to his nephew, a less experienced demon, teaching him how better to tempt the person he has been assigned to, his "patient." C. S. Lewis is not claiming these letters to truly be factual in the sense that this is really how people are tempted, but he wrote Screwtape Letters to view the subject of spiritual living differently. To see how it could perhaps appear from the opposite perspective.

Writing this letter was indeed very interesting. It did feel very strange writing advice on how "better" to get someone to sin, as opposed to avoiding sin. =P As mentioned, this one was written for an assignment for class, but I do hope to write a couple more in the future just for fun. It was very beneficial for me to write, and I hope that it can be of benefit for you as the reader as well. 

My dear Weazelwolf,

I understand that your patient has now been enrolled in a Christian university, and will be starting at the end of the summer. This is unfortunate I must say. If you had done a better job getting him to reject his parents' wishes and long to be with his basketball friends from Florida State then we would be on much better ground. But now, since you were too incompetent to manage that simple task, we are in the worst dilemma we have yet faced. This Christian university he is going to is one of the most conservative and best universities in the country (from the Enemy's perspective that is, of course). However, all hope is not lost. There are still opportunities at this university which we can use to bring your patient back. Assuming you don't mess it up again.

One of the things which we can use for our advantage is that this university is one of the larger Christian universities, and therefore must have many rules to keep things in order. Rules involving dress, personal appearance, punctuality, and many others. By themselves these rules aren't that useful, they are merely put in place to reduce "mishaps," and to keep the university unified, and to maintain a professional atmosphere and appearance. But these rules should be a great benefit to us with your patient. As I understand it, your patient greatly enjoys his own personal comfort. He enjoys wearing his jeans and T-shirts, and strongly dislikes dressing up for any kind of event, including church. The fact that he dresses more casually than most to attend church and formal events typically isn't much of a help to us since he is not doing so out of rebellion. So normally it isn't an issue. But when he gets to the university you should be able to exploit this factor in a spectacular way. Because of the nature of the university, they require their students to look nice and dress professionally, both for classes and especially for any formal events that they have on campus (and they have many of them). Your job will be to convince your patient that the reason the school requires him to dress up is because they think that "Christians are more 'spiritual' if they wear a tie." It is actually quite humorous how easy it is to convince some of these people that that is the case. Even though the university only has those rules in place to keep things organized and to have a professional appearance, it is very easy to get the students to falsely judge the university's motives and claim that they are wrong in establishing their rules. (When in all actually, if those same students become businessmen or women in a non-Christian environment, they will most likely be held to an even stricter dress code).

This example of the issue with the dress code is just an example though. What I want you to do is to take any small rule and magnify it in his mind, to the point where he sees it as a major spiritual issue. Help him see things as restrictions and not just rules. When he is told that he must keep his room clean, make him think that the university considers that anyone who has a messy room obviously must not be a "spiritual" person.

It is critical that you fulfill these instructions carefully. If you do, then we will be well on our way to building a hostile attitude in your patient toward the university and any Christian authority over him. He will grow to believe that everyone who has rules set up which keep him from participating in any activity which he wants to participate in or requiring him to do something which he doesn't want to do, has those rules set up because they think that the only way to be a proper Christian is to do it their way. Once you have him thinking this way, we are only a short step away from getting him to believe that he is his own source of authority for right and wrong. He will come to believe that if he sees something as acceptable or right then it must be right, no matter what anyone else thinks.

The Enemy has often stated that Christians should be willing to give up various pleasures or niceties for the sake of avoiding controversy with others or causing another person to "stumble," as they put it. It is imperative that you blind him to this sickening ideal which the Enemy has concocted. When your patient is thinking about any rule, regulation, or restriction which is set before him, you must only let him think about how that rule is affecting him and him alone. You must block out all others from his mind, and have him focus on how that rule restricts his freedom, his liberty, his rights, how it is a nuisance to him, an inconvenient for him. If you allow him to get his focus off of himself then all our efforts will have been for nothing.

I trust that you will be able to accomplish this task without fouling up like some of the assignments you have in the past. I am looking forward to your report next week. Make sure to include any useful information from Goudsin on how she is getting your patient's mother to annoy him by her constant nagging.

Your affectionate Uncle,                   

Skewtruth