hot sauce

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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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Tweak Something To Make It Better

There are several ways you can tweak something – some are bad, but some are good. 

tweak something to make it better

Everyone has tweaked something at some time or other in their life. 

You might have tweaked a muscle … that’s a bad kind of tweak. It’s not really bad, but it is painful. You can still walk around with that sore thigh or calf muscle, but you might have a slight limp for a day or two. 

That’s the other thing about a tweak. When it applies to a muscle, it never lasts too long. In just  a day or two that bicep muscle will feel good again. But at the moment it happens, you grimace, rub your arm and say, “I think I tweaked my bicep a bit.” 

That’s just the way it is. 

Now there is another not so nice tweak I know of. I hesitate to mention it, but I guess I will anyway. 

It happened mostly in school between boys. Every once in a while a guy would come up and grab another guy’s nipple and twist it. They would tweak it and it was painful. But that was what you got for not paying attention or being aware of who was around you.

There is another use of the word, “tweak”, and that is to make something better, or to make perfect something that is already good. 

You might tweak a car engine to make it run a little smoother. You could tweak the design plans for a house to make some dramatic enhancements.

Today I’m in the middle of tweaking my hot sauce. As I’m writing this, it is the Saturday before the Super Bowl so the timing is perfect. 

I wrote about getting a deep fryer not long ago (read about it here) and since then I’ve been working on my sauce. 

The main ingredient is Frank’s Original Hot Sauce, but I can’t divulge the rest. It is fast becoming a family secret. 

I started with reviewing about seven different recipes and whittled it down to three that I thought I would like. Each recipe had about five different ingredients that supplemented the Franks – something I didn’t realize until now.  

I had thought you just dowsed the wings with Frank’s and that was it. 

NO, NO, NO. There is more science behind the perfect sauce than that. 

So I’m on my third attempt to get the sauce just right. Today I will tweak my recipe again. I’m going to add more Frank’s, reduce one ingredient, and add another ingredient. 

The sauce is good; it just needs something more to make it perfect. So I will continue to tweak my recipe until I get it just right. 

I may have to eat a lot of wings before I patent my sauce, but that’s just the price I’ll have to pay.

Here’s the thing: Let me encourage you to tweak your time with God every once in a while. Your quiet time with God may be good, but there will come a time when you need to tweak it to make it even better. If you don’t have a fulfilling time with God right now, don’t just keep doing the same thing. Don’t lose interest. Take some effort and tweak the time you spend with God. Change where or when you meet with Him. Add journaling or a guide. Begin to read through the Bible. Whatever it takes, make the most important time of your day a little more meaningful. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What in your life needs some tweaking right now? Leave your comments and questions below.

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