Taste and See!

In the past few months, I’ve gotten into something that I never thought I would be interested in. I blame my wife. It’s usually her fault when this sort of thing happens.

I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows lately.

Like I said, it’s my wife’s fault. She loaded a bunch of them onto Netflix and, as a result, we’ve been watching long stretches of people cooking stuff.

Ah, Alton, I’ve gotten too used to your voice…

Maybe I should clarify a little. I’m not talking shows like Julia Child. These are cooking competition shows from the Food Network. We’ve burned through all the episodes of Cutthroat Kitchen. We’ve gone through every offering of Chopped. I made the decision for us to watch Iron Chef America. And now we’re in the middle of a Food Network Star marathon.

I have to admit, this causes me no end of cognitive dissonance. I do not have what anyone would call a refined palate. I have very simple taste when it comes to food. I get suspicious when someone offers me a new dish to try. So I have a hard time watching these shows at times. Not because I’m grossed out by anything that they’ve made. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around what these chefs do. How do they understand what flavors to mix together in the right proportion? How can they come up with these creative concoctions in such little time?

Even more mystifying to me is the judges. They can take one bite and just know if a dish is up to par, sussing out the different ingredients and tastes and texture. It’s amazing.

But it reminds me of a Bible verse:

Taste and see that the Lord is good;
    blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.

The Psalmist invites us to be culinary judges as well, only what we’re called on to taste and see is not some dish using unusual ingredients whipped up in record time. No, we’re invited to see how the Lord is good to us. We’re invited to taste and see, so we can see how good He is, how He saves us and protects us.

For many of us, we’ve seen this already. But it’s good to remind our palates of the Lord’s goodness. Taste and see!