Quick Chocolate Pudding

Recipe #8: p. 264, Quick Chocolate Pudding, Grace Whitehead, Kokomo, Indiana

sugar or honey
cornstarch
cocoa
milk
vanilla
margarine (optional)

"After being diagnosed with cancer, Doris started keeping a journal. Some of the entries addressed the writing of Living More with Less, and her frustration with how her illness prevented her from working on the manuscript."

"Journal Entry—November 4, 1979 (written from Hershey Medical center)
I so much want to complete this book, one of the creative works of my life. But weighed in the balance against more time with Paul, Cara, and Marta, (husband and daughters) the book is like a dry dandelion ready to blow. But I shouldn't have to make such choices. If I get well enough to work on the book I will have time with my family."

 "Doris died quietly, peaceably, and surrounded by family on November 10, 1979, the manuscript not yet completed.
But the unfinished manuscript itself may be symbolic. The task of living responsible is never finished. In her preface to the More-with-Less Cookbook Doris describes the search for more responsible eating as a "kind of holy frustration." This holy frustration for more-with-less living needs to continue in our households, travel, recreation, and church life."
http://www.heraldpress.com/Bios/Longacre/journal.html 

Doris kept a list of things she felt were the frivolities of life—things one should not let get in the way of the enjoyment of living.
Life is too short to ice cakes; cakes are good without icing.
Life is too short to read all the church periodicals.
Life is too short not to write regularly to your parents.
Life is too short to eat factory baked bread.
Life is too short to keep all your floors shiny.
Life is too short to let a day pass without hugging your spouse and each of your children.
Life is too short to nurse grudges and hurt feelings.
Life is too short to worry about getting ready for Christmas; just let Christmas come.
Life is too short to spend much money on neckties and earrings.
Life is too short for nosy questions like "How do you like your new pastor?" Or—if there’s been a death—"How is he taking it?"
Life is too short to be gone from home more than a few nights a week.
Life is too short not to take a nap when you need one.
Life is too short to care whether purses match shoes or towels match bathrooms.
Life is too short to stay indoors when the trees turn color in fall, when it snows, or when the spring blossoms come out.
Life is too short to miss the call to worship on a Sunday morning.
Life is too short for bedspreads that are too fancy to sleep under.
Life is too short to work in a room without windows.
Life is too short to put off Bible study.
Life is too short to put off improving our relationships with the people we live with.
 http://www.heraldpress.com/Bios/Longacre/

If anyone is following my posts, you may have noticed that I skipped from Recipe #6 to Recipe #8.  I have already made Recipe #7, but this one feels more timely.

Today, my daughter turns three years old, and I made chocolate pudding for her birthday.  The recipe called for very few ingredients, and the instructions were very simple: Combine ingredients.  Cook.  Stir constantly unti thickened.

This sounded simple enough, and, in reality, it was.  I just did not have realistic expectations for how long it takes for pudding to thicken.

I really enjoy stirring pots of cooking food, and I always have.  I have fond memories of stirring pots of sauce or holiday foods when my family was cooking.

And the process of watching cornstarch turn powder and liquid materials into a thickened substance, was really quite intriguing for me.

But it took forty-five minutes of constant stirring for my Quick Chocolate Pudding to thicken.  Those were forty-five minutes that I could have been reading a book with my daughter, or tickling her, or telling her stories about her first three years of life.

While I agree with Longacre, that Americans in general overeat sugar and processed foods (More-with-Less p. 21), I also believe that she is correct when she says, "There is not just one way to respond, nor is there a single answer to the world's food problem.  It may not be within our capacity to effect an answer.  But it is within our capacity to search for a faithful response" (More-with-Less p. 13).

This search for a faithful response must also take into Longacre's list of Life is too short...

And for me, life might just be too short to make my own pudding in the future.