I made rice crispy treats tonight. I was making loaded cheesy potato soup (amazing, I might add) and I was “multi-tasking”. I turned another burner on to melt some butter, and when that was melted, I added my marshmallows. As they were melting, I realized something that yes, wasted some marshmallows but taught me more about myself than anything.
In my attempt to whip up a tasty but quick dinner after a long, busy day and to make some quick dessert/snack at the same time, I’d turned the burner on too high, so the butter melted too fast and before I knew it, I had burned my butter. If I’d taken the time to realize this, I would have avoided dumping a whole bag of marshmallows into the burned butter, but my attempt to be fast made me lack simple observation skills.
I wanted to move quickly. I wanted to get dinner prep done now and for the butter to be melted as quickly as possible so I could move on to the next task and then I could have that project all completed… my mind was already in the next project, the next location, the next thing … I was losing ground over where I was in the present.
Are you seeing what I’m going with this? Impatience.
Melting butter–it’s such a simple task, but my impatience caused me to waste the initial ingredient and then proceed to be irrational and to mix perfectly good ingredients into something that was already ruined. My impatience caused me to lack perspective and because I didn’t take the time to gain the perspective that was needed, and as a result, my impatience caused me to waste something wonderful that I had in order to attain {or create} something else. Sure, it was only 10 oz of marshmallows – a few bucks of wasted ingredients – and about 3 minutes of wasted time, but in reality, life can so easily become a cycle of burning butter, of wasting the present in anticipation of the future, of losing perspective in an attempt to do as many things as fast as we can to get as far down the road of life as fast as humanly possible.
The end result of this impatience is more than a brown batch of melted marshmallows that found its way into my garbage can. Impatience in life leads to discontentment, ruined relationships, missed opportunities, and even bitterness towards the Lord for His plans differing than ours.
As I learn to slow down and lower the heat in my cooking, I pray that the Lord would also teach me patience and protect me from burning butter in my daily life.
Making My Boast 
Good lesson! My grandfather always used to say, “Quick decisions cause accidents!” On a side note: How burned was the butter? Some recipes actually call for “browned butter”, it does indeed darken the end result, but it also adds a lot of good flavor. Just a thought for next time 🙂
Oh, I’ve definitely used browned butter, but it just doesn’t work for rice krispy treats… and unfortunately, this was on the burned side of brown. 😉