Those little cloves

Cloves – those tiny little things which bring so much flavour to food. Indian cooking almost always involves frying up some cloves somewhere. Even though we use a rice cooker to cook our rice I have been known to throw in cloves to bring about that wonderful aroma and a bit of a kick to the taste. But here’s the thing – whenever I do, I always put cloves along with other such little additives in a little muslin cloth sachet that floats in the rice so I can fish it out later before serving the dish. But many people don’t do that and so very often the cloves are in the food. 

In the UK I cooked a dish and for want of time I didn’t bother with the muslin cloth and so I just had a small amount of cloves along with other aromatics in the curry I was cooking. Once we began to eat dinner, sure enough after about three or four bites I found myself chomping down on a clove. Now I realise that for some people that is a welcome and most savoury surprise. I am not one of those people. I belong to the category of folks for whom that experience nearly spoils the rest of the meal. Because the very distinct (and for me unwelcome) taste of crushed cloves in my mouth now not only permeates this mouthful of food but it tends to linger through the next two or three as well. And there’s also the mental game that has now begun wherein my mind is aware that there are cloves that have not been picked out. What happens is that laid back enjoying of the food is replaced by a scrutiny of each bite to ensure there’s no clove or half a clove hidden somewhere waiting to be crushed by my unfortunate teeth. By now clove lovers and clove haters are thinking “drama queen alert!”. But regardless of amazing the meal is and how perfect everything else on the table might be – that one nasty clove experience ruins the entire dining experience for me.

As I got over the taste in my mouth and settled myself with some ice cream to end the meal on a high I thought to myself – hang on!! That’s exactly how sin works. We can’t say “But it’s just a little sin”. Sin carries with it the ability to override all other flavours that could possibly be. A near perfect day can be altered by that act of sin just as a near perfect meal can be altered by a tiny yet powerful clove.

I pray that God would continue to give me a healthy distaste for sin and for shortcomings in my own life so that I will strive to offer Him the best I can rather than make excuses for the “cloves” that I also served up.