Cooking with my Aunt

A couple of summers ago, my siblings and I stayed at my aunt's house while my parents and grandparents were at a wedding for my cousins. During this time, we enjoyed so many adventures, but the one I was most fond of was when we made cinnamon rolls.

 My aunt's cinnamon rolls are legend. The recipe for them have been passed down three generations and perfected in that time. Every time we come to visit my aunt, she always makes two batches of raisin cinnamon rolls with nuts for my dad (that's his most favorite thing ever). The best part about these cinnamon rolls are that they are made completely from scratch- something that is very hard to find today. 

 When we made cinnamon rolls, my aunt called us into her kitchen. After making the dough using a shiny red KitchenAid mixer, she threw the dough onto her island and instructed us to roll it out flat. As soon as we were done rolling, we spread a mixture of cinnamon, suger, and other spices on the dough along with lots and lots of butter. Then, my aunt came over to us and used the rolling pin to start rolling the dough into a roll. As she rolled, we sprinkled raisins and nuts (and I slipped in some more cinnamon).

 Along the way, I noticed how dirty her kitchen had started to become. Flour was everywhere along with the other ingredients that we used. Discarded and used egg boxes were stacked precariously on the kitchen counter top. To me, I thought that this was chaos. Even with my OCD personality trying to keep my mess to a minimum, I noticed that I was creating a mess myself.

All of a sudden, a huge sack of flower fell to the floor from where my aunt was ripping it open. The kitchen fell silent as we waited for my aunt's reaction.

She laughed.

We were all shocked. Why was she laughing? Didn't she realize this added even more to the already long list of things we needed to clean up?  

Her response to our shock was profound. "When baking, you're going to make a mess. And you're going to have to clean it up. But that's okay. It's okay to make messes and get messy". 

We all mulled over this in our heads, and we quickly resumed back to baking. Every time I'm in the kitchen now, I always think back to her, especially when messes are made.

Now that I'm a little older, I understand the parallels of that statement between messes and baking and life. At some point, we might make a mess. Big or small, one day it will happen to us if it hasn't already. And we need to be okay with that.