Keep going (continued)

Posted August 24th, 2009

"What are you doing?" Kimmy-the-wonderwife asked me yesterday morning as I poured heavy whipping cream into the mixing bowl.

"Making butter," I answered.

She rolled her eyes. I smiled. It meant that I was getting off easy. No lecture, not even a "that's stupid".

"I've made butter before," she told me. "A couple of times. We made it with the girls in school. They took turns shaking a jar with cream until it turned into butter. Plus I've over-whipped cream and ended up with butter."

I nodded but told her that that probably wasn't butter.

"Stop," she said.

So I stopped. She took some of the whipped cream out of the mixing bowl and put it on top of the berries she was eating and waved that I could go on with what I was doing. The cream turned from liquid to thick liquid to soft whipped cream as I beat air into it. Then just past the hard peaks stage the mixture thickened and didn't move much in the bowl.

"There," she said, "that's butter."

I had thought so too once before, but it's not. It's just thickened cream. It kind of looks like Cool Whip that hasn't quite defrosted. 

"Not yet," I said, "the liquid has to be released."

She raised an eyebrow and I began to think she was right. The mixture wasn't really doing anything. The beater kept moving through the cream and it was thick but not changing at all. This went on a long time. I almost stopped—maybe I had used the wrong sort of cream. All I could find was ultra-pasteurized. Maybe the stabilizers would keep this cream from turning into butter.

I kept going.

And then there was a sudden change. A little amount of liquid appeared on the bottom. We both moved closer to watch. Then more liquid was released and the solids came together as a yellow mass. Butter.

I strained off the liquid and kneaded the butter in cold water until the water rinsed off clean. It looked and tasted just like normal butter.

Sometimes cooking is just cooking, but often it's also a metaphor. There are a ton of times in life where we quit too quickly thinking that what we have is butter. We stop because we've learned to accept ok instead of really working for great. We stop because we don't know that we can get to great. We stop because with a little effort we've gotten most of the way and we don't see the point of all that additional effort just to get the last little bit.

Sometimes we stop because nothing seems to be happening for so long that there seems little point in continuing. If you've ever been on a diet you know that feeling. Initially you take off the weight pretty easily but at some point, despite your best efforts, you plateau. You eat right and exercise and you don't lose another pound. Maybe you even go up a little. You know that you should keep going but the voice saying "what's the point" inside you gets louder and louder.

And yes, when I told Kim about my metaphor with whipped cream and butter for successful dieting, she rolled her eyes again.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.