Cooking Without Consequences

During the holidays you may have experienced (or may soon) a phenomenon that I've come to call "Cooking Without Consequences." This occurs when someone in your household, in a flight of holiday fancy, imagines they've been transformed into a Food Channel superstar, or Julia Child. In this fanciful state of mind, a new breed of cooking takes place in your otherwise modest kitchen. Small glass bowls with appropriately pre-measured ingredients are set out in preparation. Large bowls, small implements, and motorized assistants appear for brief appearances in the dance of cooking.

You may experience a soundtrack as well to cover the festive tinkling of glass and metal...which will add to the abandon the cook experiences as they create sugar plums and other delights. But after the gingerbread or apple or pecan wafts away...the curtain will fall, the dessert consumed, and the chef is spent. The camera cuts away for the evening and the spotlights fade...another episode to air another day. Some time passes. More time passes. Perhaps a day even. And when you ask the star about the state of the stage, you'll hear that they cooked! and cannot be expected to clear as well. And then you can take it fully in. The measure of baking creation...every particle of spilled sugar and flour...every single use bowl...every batter-beating paddle and sticky implement. For you see, there is no aftermath for the cook...only for the one who must clean it up.

It distills upon me that this life lesson is a metaphor for how our current liberal government currently runs the kitchen. There are no ingredient budgets, or planning, or recipes beyond the most vague generalities *DELICIOUS FOOD* And they are happy to invite their friends to the demonstration...because they secretly have the finished product in the oven already...this is all for show the sweat of your brow and the flour under your fingernails (looks like French tips!) And when they've had their fill of cake, demolished the kitchen and used up all the tools and implements...they're off to party elsewhere...while the responsible folks are going to be left with a big, big mess. Hold government accountable...and put them on a paper plate & macaroni diet.