A Heaven on Earth Recipe

It’s almost summer.  I equate that with egg salad sandwiches. There were two things my mother loved for lunch during the hotter season in Minnesota (whether ‘summer’ was for a month or just for a few days). Egg Salad held favored first preference followed very closely by the famous BLT. I had a great childhood!

I suspect that lunchtime with the bacon-lettuce-tomato came in second because of the tomato. They HAD to be garden-grown fresh, or the sandwich was completely ruined. The eggs?  Well, anytime works for eggs.

But looking at these two sandwiches and expanding the thought to recipes in general, we find that it is our combination of ingredients that either delight the palate in a heavenly manner or create an urgent need for a trip to the local ER.

Toasted bread, crisp bacon, crunchy lettuce, and straight from the garden tomatoes combined with a little bit of mayo create this heavenly meal called the BLT. 

Toasted bread with crushed hard-boiled eggs mixed with Hellman’s (sorry mom, Miracle Whip doesn’t do it for me) allow for another visit to paradise.

Here’s another summer recipe though. Combine the following for an interesting Broccoli Salad.

• Bacon
• Broccoli
• Red Onions
• Raisins
• Sunflower seeds
• Almonds
• Cheddar cheese
• White Sugar
• Mayonnaise
• Vinegar

When I first looked at those ingredients and imagined them all stirred up together, I also envisioned that I would be telling the nurse that I have learned my lesson. I will never again believe the internet and that this was not some self-harming exercise.

And then, squeamishly, I tried it.

I was hooked – it was delicious! But onions, sugar, vinegar, and mayo? I simply cannot (and writing this, my reaction is still the same) see where these items would taste well mixed together. And yet.

We can certainly be creatures of habit. We tend to rely on what we know, what we have experienced in the past, and what makes us comfortable in our own surroundings.

• But what if we tried a new recipe’?
• What if we stepped out in faith and experimented a little?
• What if instead of ‘assuming’, we explored the lives of others - face to face.  Yes, those others who are not like us, who are not in our comfort zone, who are not part of the echo chambers that we rely on so very much today?
• What if we added something crazy like well, celery pieces to the egg salad of our lives? 
• Or what if we took it a little further and tried a Mediterranean Egg Salad?

I like the egg salad, the simple egg salad that I make all the time. I will continue to enjoy it all summer long. But I’m looking at this Mediterranean thing and cannot wait to try it. It also looks like heaven on earth. 

And then, I think I might take some of that new experience and knock on the door of one of those people in the neighborhood who are least like me. In a quest for friendship, I will offer a container of my new experiment to them. I wonder if that might eventually lead to another, deeper, and more fulfilling kind of heaven on earth.

This will make for a great story if it works. If it doesn't, I'll try another door.

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you."  Luke 6:27