Where are you going so fast?

Most things taste better with time. I've come to see the truth in this as I become more and more involved in an artisan lifestyle. Investing extra time in things like the rising of dough, allowing the yeast to transform otherwise undetectable molecules into fantastic creations of flavorful tastebud stimulants. Or the aging of an enlightened monk's malted creation for a thirst quenching experience of perfectly melded simpleton ingredients. Or the anticipation of late summer meals made with fresh garden ingredients we planted last month.

There are however exceptions to the requirement of adding time to your list of ingredients. For example, the 40 minute hamburger buns I am working on right now (seen above before baking). This is a meal saving recipe I found on recipezaar.com that turned out surprisingly good despite cutting out the usual rise time required of traditional bun making recipes (for those who don't bake, the time allowed for dough to rise/ferment plays a crucial roll (pun intented) in the quality of flavor in your baked good). The substitute for flavor inducing fermentation (have I mentioned how much I love yeast!) is some other highly flavorful ingredient, in this case it's sugar. In others it may be salt or some other mouth party guest, like added fat, which is the main purveyor of flavor in the food world- big reason Crisco was so popular when I was a kid. These supplements can be a respectable substitute in a pinch, but only once in a while.

The problem however is that over time these additives to our food and our lives (metaphorically speaking) begin to take a toll on our health, both physically and mentally. The shortcuts we take to cram every ounce of pleasure out of our short finite lives begin to degrade our well being. This in turn reinforces our drive to cram even more into our file cabinet of sensory overload in hopes of living our lives to the fullest. In the end some of these shortcuts pay of and the rest will just pile up in a heap of "been there, done that, give me 2 egg McMuffins w/ cheese so I won't be late for the job I got myself into, so I can sit in a small corner of a building clawing my way towards a 5% annual pay increase in order to pretend I'm on a stable track to retirement so that I can waste my youth ensuring I won't have to turn around when I'm 75 and supplement my dwindling social security "benefit" by microwaving some up and coming corporate climber's, McD's breakfast "sandwich" so he won't be late for the meeting some other mindless mokey could have filled in for.

Getting to my point, evaluate what it is you mean to accomplish, make sure it is really all that valuable to you, and give yourself the time to properly enjoy the process of obtaining that delectable creation.

But in conclusion, I am reminded as I pause from rambling to stoke the charcoal grill with some chemical, flavor altering, petroleum based lighter fluid, there will be pleanty of instances where a reasonable shortcut is justified in order to get the "burgers off the grill at the same time as your 40 minute buns come out of the oven".