Rainbows, unicorns and sparkles

I grew up in a family that was no stranger to four letter words, in a town with potty mouth and  in a generation that uses the f bomb like punctuation.  As a result of that, in my teens and twenties I'm reasonably certain I could swear for 15 minutes straight without repeating myself.  And then I really read Ephesians 4:29, which in the Message version states: 

"Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift."

So I decided to change my speech patterns.  It was pretty easy to drop the f bomb punctuation. And it wasn't too hard to find alternate ways to describe large or fun or positive things. However, I struggled and struggled with my foul and dirty mouth whenever I got frustrated.  I felt like substituting similar sounding words (like "shoot") or using less "bad" words (like "butthole") wasn't any less foul or dirty than the cuss words.  I also tried just muting the bad words (leaving a pause instead of saying the word, knowing that my audience would know which one I meant). Again, it just felt like I was still communicating the foul and dirty ideas even if I wasn't using the words.  I struggled with ways to express frustration without being foul or dirty.  And finally I had an epiphany.  I needed to come up with some words that allow me to express frustration.  But the ultimate goal is not to just be frustrated and let others know it, but to get rid of the frustration and replace it with joy.

So now when I'm frustrated, I throw in words like rainbows, unicorns, and sparkles.  It helps get the frustration out.  And it makes me smile.  It is pretty difficult to keep the negative emotions of a rant going when you are saying sparkles and unicorns.

Why on earth is this post on a food blog, you may be asking yourself. That is an excellent question! When you spend the first 30 years of your life eating cheese cake, pizza, macaroni and cheese,  Ghirardelli milk chocolate chip cookies, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Cadburry Eggs and a host of other delicious lactose containing foods, it is pretty unicorn frustrating when you eat 2 bites of something delicious and 12 to 36 hours later your rainbowing digestional tract goes into full panic mode causing noise, pain and embarrassment as you make a mad dash to the bathroom, without regard for how sparkling inconvenient it happens to be at the time.  Also, cooking is frustrating even when you don't have to worry about figuring out if you can  find a way to make something that was intended to have dairy without it.  When you add the frustration of realizing that it isn't just dairy that ties your guts in knots, but also the most common dairy substitute, soy, it is unicorning annoying.  

See, you enjoyed my rant, and by the end of it, I was giggling.  So if you see rainbows and unicorns in my recipe, know that I was frustrated, but I am now joyful.