Week 68: Creamy Polenta Egg Bake with Sausage
A spur-of-the-moment choice and so yummy!
Each Sunday, my wife and I cook and eat a meal together — intentionally. Every Friday, I’ll be sharing our experience here in this space. I want to see the growth that will come in our marriage because of this. I hope you enjoy our story. You can find last week’s post here.
Sarah and I woke up this particular morning with no plan in mind food-wise. Usually we look at recipes the night before. But for whatever reason, life had caught up to us this week.
I start this week’s post off that way, not to guilt you into giving us a pass for procrastination, but to acknowledge that life is like that. Things move quickly. Chaos ensues. We forget. Life gets shuffled up.
We’ve all been there. This week is a story of how it’s okay to embrace that.
“Can you Google gluten-free recipes?”
“Can I? Yes, but…”
Not the time, Aaron. Not the time. Gosh, that’s going back to a rookie mistake!
It was a Sunday morning, and it also happened to be Father’s Day. We were getting ready to go up to Kalamazoo for dinner with Sarah’s parents and my Dad. My poor attempt at humor came just as Sarah was doing her hair — not the opportune time for sarcasm.
“Yes, honey, I’ll look them up for you right away,” — is what I should have said.
Anyways, I did proceed to look for gluten-free recipes. However, I wasn’t finding anything that looked particularly appetizing to me. Then, I noticed something that sounded…interesting.
Creamy Polenta Egg Bake with Sausage.
I looked through the ingredients and I was hooked. I read it aloud to Sarah and she said to go for it. We had our recipe for the week just like that! Now it was time for me to go to the store while Sarah packed our clothes for the trip.
Often, I find myself wanting life to slow down. Wanting things to get easier. But they don’t. They just don’t. All my wishing doesn’t change that.
It’s easy to say “just enjoy life and stop wishing for things to get easier.” But HOW do you do that? How do you stop worrying about life’s increasing pace? How do you take in each moment and enjoy it on its own merits?
I’m growing in that, but I’m not all the way there yet. It’s hard. But then I look at my wife’s face or I give her a big hug. I realize I have all I need right there. God has blessed me overabundantly, and I have no reason for worry.
I came home with all the ingredients, and we got cracking! Sarah and I started prepping the sausage and polenta (which ended up being cornbread mix because that’s the only thing I could find that actually said “gluten-free” on it).
After that cooked for a while, it was time to add in the eggs. Sarah had me on egg cracking duty. Now, I’ll be honest, I’ve never been that confident with egg cracking. I see the chefs who just crack and drop in one fell swoop. It always seems to take me about 5 steps. I smash the egg, then I’m not confident in the size of the crack, so I smash it again. Then I push on the crack to open it up, then I pull the egg apart hoping not to let any shell pieces fall. All of this usually ends up with copious amounts of egg matter flying wantonly.
Sarah took one look at this spectacle and let out a chuckle. She is an expert egg cracker. But, finally, I had all the eggs cracked and in the pan. It…just…took a little longer than it should have.
We put the whole thing in the oven and let it cook. The smell of comfort food permeated our apartment. The timer finally went off, and we opened the oven. Sarah pulled out the pan and started scooping out our creamy creation.
I took one bite, and — honestly — it tasted like nothing else I’ve eaten before. I say that in a good way. It was creamy and so flavorful. It was a mixture of many different tastes, and I cleaned my bowl very quickly. I gave Sarah a sheepish look as I pondered seconds. I was relieved when the same look was returned.
Yes, it was spur-of-the-moment. But sometimes life calls for serendipity. Sometimes you need to be flexible. Sometimes life is moving fast.
And you know what?
That’s just fine.
