chicken soup is good for the soul

i finished reading Spurgeon's All Of Grace between my lab classes yesterday. around a year ago, i was convinced that what i was lacking in my spiritual life was grace. not that i didn't already have it, but i wanted the conviction of grace. as i was explaining to E, i didn't want to just sing Amazing Grace during church, i wanted a personal understanding of it. i wanted to experience what John Newton must have felt when he penned that famous hymn.

eventally, i became convinced that if only i read this book (an online copy is available here, by the way), i could be levelling up spiritually ;). of course, it's pretty silly to try and contain God in a formula, and by the time i actually managed to obtain a copy, i was well aware that God does not, in fact, need a book to remind me of how sinful i am. i read the book anyway.

i'm in between rotations at the moment, and it is pretty evident just how productive i can be as long as studying is not on the cards. between 0800 to 1030, i went for a run, showered, convinced my brother to replace my lightbulbs (2 out of 3 had blown!) and fix my laptop, prepared lunch/dinner, and did the dishes.

this morning, mum assigned me to unsupervised cooking duty, which i was absolutely thrilled about. learning how to cook with my mum is a bit like learning how to do practical procedures in hospital. you have to watch it done 100x before you actually get to do anything. well, she had no choice today, so as she left the house, she insisted that all of the cooking was done outside, so that at least the house remained clean.

i was meant to cook chicken macaroni, which is pretty easy- in theory. However, mum told me to fry the garlic first because it takes forever to cook. that was the start of my troubles. by the time i had finished frying, nearly everything was dark brown/black. when it came to filling the pot with water and putting the chicken in, there were all these black bits floating around the top. i'm pretty sure burnt anything would make the soup bitter, so i got a sieve and fished everything out. which left... just the chicken, and water.

i suppose theoretically, that should still make soup?

{lunch!}