When I was a sophomore in college, I had to learn how to cook, primarily because I had to at least once a week for my roommates.  The first meals I started to cook were based primarily on a recipe, especially ones with pictures.  I did this so that I could see if I were on the right track.

I’d get all my ingredients together, and start cooking.  For the first couple of months, I would be really nervous.  No matter what I cooked, and no matter how many times I had already cooked it previously, sometime within the middle of the cooking time, I would get worried because the dish cooking in the pot didn’t even remotely resemble the picture.  (One recipe in particular sticks my mind.  I don’t remember what I was cooking, but the cookbook showed the meal as being a bright reddish orange, while my pot was green and yellow.)

I kept telling myself, "It’s okay.  It’s okay.  You’re not done yet.  It will hopefully look right in the end."

I pressed forward in fear because I had to feed five people in 15 minutes and it was already too late to do anything else.

In the end, the meal turned out perfectly!

So why tell a story about cooking?  Frankly, I think our politicians can learn a thing or too from this story.