hot wings

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An Original Should Not Be Tinkered With

Tonight I’m going to try an original sauce on my wings. 

an original should not be tinkered with

About a year ago I started making hot wings at home. I had a spot that I always got my wings from but, during one of the COVID lockdowns, they closed and I needed a different source for my weekly craving. 

It was a good thing I started making them myself because my wing guy didn’t open back up for almost six months. 

Think about that for a moment: I might have gone without wings for half a year! 

… I’m not sure I would have survived. 

Along with taking on the role of head wing chef in our house, I also needed to have a sauce that would match or rival my old wing joint. I experimented for weeks, tweaking my recipe each time I had wings until I finally found a taste to my liking.

I’m sure that most high-level chefs go through the same process when they are trying to create a new dish. They add a dash of this and a pinch of that, always with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. 

… I know those spices from listening to Simon and Garfunkel in the 60’s. Those four spices always have to go together – not in my wing sauce, of course, but when a chef is inventing a new delectable delight to satisfy the taste buds of his customers.

We all tinker with things, trying to make them more to our liking. We might try to tweak something to make it easier to use. We might try to make something more affordable, or appeal to a wider range of people. 

Sometimes it doesn’t work. 

When I was growing up, my mother would occasionally buy us Alpha-Bit cereal. I remember really liking it. Over my formative years I ate my way through many, many boxes of that early reading tool.

Then recently I had a chance to try Alpha-Bits again. There was something that just was not right about them. It had been so long since I’d eaten them, but I knew there was something different. 

I read on the box, “new enhanced flavour”. In this case, no, it was not “new enhanced”, it was “not very good”. I won’t be trying Alpha-Bits any time soon.

But back to my wing sauce … 

I had a few wings on vacation at my brother’s cottage. Of course he didn’t have my sauce, but what he did have was the main ingredient in my recipe: Franks Red Hot sauce. 

So I decided to try it straight up on his wings. You know what? There was something about it that was really good … maybe even better than my sauce. 

I’m not sure, so tonight I will try it at home with my wings – Frank’s, straight up. 

It’s possible I should never have tried to tweak the formula. Sticking with the original may be the best way to go.

Don’t overthink or try to improve on something that is already just the way it should be. 

Here’s the thing: There are times that we want to tweak our faith a little to bring it into line with some of the current thoughts and trends of the day. Remember that the original is the best. The Word of God is our timeless authority and we should continue to follow it and not try to massage it more to our liking or the world’s liking. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you tweaked that you realized you shouldn’t have? Leave your comments and questions below.

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I’m A Contradiction And I Don’t Care

Most people are going to think that I’m a contradiction to what I’ve said I believe and practice.

I'm a contradiction and I don't care

But before you get your shirt in a knot, I’ll assure you it has nothing to do with my faith.

There are a lot of things these day that are contradictions. For example, there was Biden’s executive order of wearing a mask on all federal premises and then he was seen on federal premises without a mask. 

I’m a contradiction because I recently wrote four blog posts about a plan for losing weight. And now in this post I’m going to tell you something that seems to go directly against all I wrote in those previous posts.

Adults have this problem of not acting out what they say they believe. Parents will even tell their children, “Do as I say, not as I do.” The reason they say that is because what they are telling their children directly contradicts something that they are doing. 

No wonder, by the time kids reach junior or high school, they no longer believe anything their parents say. To teens, their parents are a contradiction. 

We’ve seen in our society where people condemn the violence that took place at the Capital Building, but then defend the violence of the many protests which took place in US cities during the summer.

We are a complete contradiction. 

So be kind to me when I tell you I just bought a deep fryer. 

That’s right, I wrote about how you can lose that weight you desperately want to get rid of and then I bought a deep fryer. 

It’s like I was saying, “Do this, but I’m going to do something contradictory instead.” 

It seems like I’m a contradiction and not just on the surface. You may be thinking “I’d like to see you get out of this one, you phony.”

Though I admit it seems like I’m a contradiction, I really am not. 

You see, the four posts I wrote about losing weight were not tied to a diet. I didn’t encourage anyone to only eat certain foods. In those posts I was advocating a lifestyle. I was saying this is how you can live your life and lose weight. 

One of the things I do each week is have chicken wings. I didn’t stop eating chicken wings in order to lose weight. I am, however, careful not to eat them too often. 

But I enjoy them and I will enjoy my life. 

Recently, the place where I get my wings each Saturday night (and I only have them once a week) has been closed. I’m not sure they will open up again, but if they do, they were going to start selling fish as well. 

Lily is highly allergic to fish, so it was looking like the end of getting wings there any way … best wings in town, by the way.

So I thought I would try to make my own wings. There is no difference in ordering wings from a restaurant once a week or making them myself once a week. 

No contradiction. 

By the way, they were delicious. … Now I’ve just got to perfect my hot sauce recipe. 

Here’s the thing: There are some people who say that the Bible is filled with contradictions. That is as good a reason as any for them not to believe the Bible. But the truth is, if you take a deep and closer look into what the Bible really does say, you will find that the seeming contradictions are not there at all. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What might be some contradictions you are living with now? And what will you do about them? Leave your comments and questions below.

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