I purchased a few boxes of those “cake in a mug”, single serving cakes and brownies that you just add water to the mix in a mug, microwave and “Voila!” I bought them mostly for my daughter who loves to bake and who wishes that we kept more bake goods around the house. Unfortunately for her, I have virtually no self-control when it comes to sweets, so I can’t have them around (especially now that I no longer have to compete with three teenage boys, for whatever is in the pantry). I have to rely on my laziness to not want to get into the car, put on some lipstick, drive in the car, park and go into a store, in order to buy any goodies and other irresistible temptations that are likely to fall into my cart, especially if they are buy-one-get-one. And if I am too lazy to do that, certainly I am not up to getting out the mixer, the ingredients, the bowls, the spoons, preparing everything, baking, cleaning everything up, all for a plate of cookies that is going to last two minutes, tops, in physical form, in our household, and inevitably add six pounds to my waistline by the end of the day.
So, I thought as a nice gesture, I would buy her these single packets, as her busy school/activity schedule doesn’t allow for her to do much baking either.
“So, how are the instant mug desserts?” I asked my daughter, smiling hopefully.
“Eh,” she said. (In some weird way, while I was bummed for her, I was sort of relieved. If she said, “Great!”, before long I would have wandered into the kitchen, picked out an extra large mug and at least two packets of the easy bake oven mix, as I’ve never been good at following recipes to the T. Then, I would have nuked up my own sugar bomb in the microwave, in seconds flat. And then, one to two hours later, I would have repeated the process, maybe even saving some time and just eating the batter. It just occurred to me that these mixes are the descendants of the Easy Bake Oven family, but instead of the anticipation of a light bulb SLOWLY cooking your food, like all things today, you get much more instant gratification, with the seconds flat microwave option)
“You know,” my daughter said. “They over-simplify things these days. I would have more than willing to crack an egg, just for something just a little bit more satisfying.”
How refreshing to hear a 15-year-old complain about today’s world being too focused on immediate gratification! There’s hope for us yet.
“We’ve become so addicted to instant gratification that we’re blind to the impact it has on our lives.”
― Frank Sonnenberg
“We want instant lunch, instant cure, instant miracles, instant salary, instant success— instant everything. This instant civilization, we have obsessed with, has made us grow a tad too impatient in virtually everything about life. And, of course, that doesn’t serve us so well.”
― Boniface Sagini