It was a moment worthy of an I Love Lucy episode. I was making snickerdoodles to take to my support group meeting. Instead of spooning out snickerdoodle dough or rolling it out, the way to shape snickerdoodles is to roll the dough into a ball and then roll the ball into a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Only, my dough wouldn’t roll into a ball.
As I put my hands into the dough to gather it up and roll it into a ball, the dough just coated my hands. I looked like I was wearing baseball mitts made out of snickerdoodles dough. More flour was added to the dough until it was able to be rolled into balls. The cookies turned out great!
The next day, I set out to make snickerdoodles again. It’s a long-standing rule of the house that when I prepare a dish for a meeting, a bake sale, or a covered dish supper, I need to make another one for my household to enjoy. As I prepared my mise en place for the second batch of snickerdoodles, I noticed that the amount of flour that was written in the recipe was more than I had measured out the day before.
What happened? What didn’t I do earlier? The difference is that on the second day, I wore my reading glasses while getting the ingredients together. That’s right! I couldn’t see the correct amount in the recipe because I didn’t put on the glasses. When did the numbers in the cookbooks get so small, anyways?
A lesson was learned. In the future, I need to have my reading glasses close by, just in case. Baking after middle age is not for the faint of heart or short of sight, without compensating for the new challenges.
This is true of all things in life, not just baking. As ages and stages of life change, it’s important to make adjustments to the process. “The way things have always been done” is a mindset that may lead to something more damaging than wet cookie dough. In all things, evaluate the situation as though it were the first time, instead of the hundred and first!
Journey with Monica 
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