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December
Advice
I Love You

November
38. Bald is beautiful
37. Fire
36 Sleep
35 Music

October 2006
34. Stupidity
33. Painting
32. mmm Pasties
31. Built to last
30. Phlegm

September 2006
29. Meetings
28. Crime thoughts
27. Colours
26. Unwanted guests

August 2006
25. Comparison
24. Waterproof Mascara
23. Tasty MSG
22. Helplessness

July 2006
21. Attraction
20. Hair
19. Hero
18. Laughter
17. Factoids

June 2006
16. Voiceless
15. Bruises (ouch)
14. Sunburn
13. Mistakes

May 2006
12. Arms
11. Willow Tree
10. Eurovision
9. Chicken
8. Addictions

April 2006
7. Age
6. Celebrities
5. Language

March 2006
4. Commonwealth Games
3. Decisions
2. Drizzle
1. Trelawney

mmm, pasties!

 Mmm, there is something great about home cooked food. One of things I love about going home to Cornwall is the chance to have all my favourite things cooked by my mum. Another thing is to have all the great things that Cornwall is famous for. The Cornish pasty, the Cornish Cream tea with huge dollops of clotted cream, saffron cake, Cornish fairings (yummy spicy ginger-esque biscuits) and Kelly’s blackcurrant and clotted cream ice-cream. My stomach rumbles just at the thought of all these scrummy products. The Cornish certainly have been busy making unique food products! 

You may find somewhere that sells Devonshire clotted cream (I think you’ll find those pesky Devonians stole the recipe!), a cream tea with, heaven forbid (no, it really does forbid it in the celestial place!)the scones topped with whipped cream or worse, squirty cream! There may be non-Cornish pasties or some fake fairings, but they won’t taste as good – they’re not the real deal. It’s like drinking a non-Irish Guinness, non-French Champagne, or tea with sugar in…it’s just not right!  

This summer I learnt that all curling stones come from a small muffin-looking island called Ailsa Craig. Here the granite has a perfect quality for the needs of a curling stone, better than anywhere else. If a curling stone is made from another source, then it’s not quite as good, it’s a poor substitute and you won’t get the results – just ask the Women’s Curling 2002 Winter Olympic Gold Medal Winners!  

So everywhere we look there are cheap knock-offs, shoddy replicas, alternatives to the real McCoy be it in food, sports equipment or anything else. Cornflakes of the non-Kellogg variety, beans not made by Heinz, cubic zirconium instead of a diamond and Quorn instead of real meat. There is also an increase in the number of alternatives in spirituality. Gem stones for healing, tarot cards and astrology for guidance, life coaches to succeed, self help books for every single aspect of our lives that we hadn’t even realised we were failing at! There are so many solutions offered to solve our problems – money, confidence, a new car, cosmetic surgery, a certain lipstick, a different cleaning product and so much more, all fight to tell us how our lives could be so much better, if not perfect. But like the clotted cream from Devon, they inevitable disappoint. They cannot fulfil our needs, heal our pains, accept us for who we are, and give our life purpose.

You want to know the reason a Cornish pasty tastes so good? (apart from the genius of the Cornish bakers) It is because you have to make the effort to go and get one. The best tasting pasty for me is over 6 hours away (from Barnecutt’s – for your info next time you find yourself in Liskeard!) which could be quite expensive if that’s all I went there for! But the real things, the genuine articles are usually harder to come by and will cost you more than the readily available, cheap alternatives. The friendships I really treasure are those which I’ve had to make the effort for, those which don’t happen overnight but take time and hard work. Following Jesus has cost me so much more than I ever thought it would, but it is all worth it when it means I get to have a real relationship with the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords.  

When you’ve curled with Ailsa Craig granite (not talking from experience here!) you wouldn’t settle for any old granite, when you’ve tasted a cream tea with Cornish Clotted cream you wouldn’t allow any inferior cream product to touch a scone, so why, when we’ve experienced the love of God do we sometimes find ourselves settling for the cheap alternatives? If we are put off by how it costs us to follow Jesus, the way the truth and the life, maybe we need to see how much it cost Him.