Is it the Real Deal?

On the first day of autumn, rain hammered my yard and temperatures cooled. It was the perfect day for making pumpkin bread.

As I gathered the ingredients, I thought of my husband walking into the house after a wearisome business trip. The smell of pumpkin spice and cinnamon will be a pleasant homecoming.   

First, I mixed the dry ingredients, and then I added a can of pumpkin puree, eggs, oil. As I poured the thick batter into the baking pan, something looked different.

It was a new recipe so I shrugged and put the pan in the oven and set the timer. Occasionally, I’d check on the pumpkin bread, but it was rising like normal. No worries.

When the buzzer went off. I placed a toothpick into the bread to test if it was done.

The batter was gooey, so I set the timer for another five minutes. Then I licked the toothpick.

Yep, definitely pumpkin, but something was missing. It wasn’t  ….. Sweet.

I checked the recipe. No wonder the batter was low. I  forgot to add a cup of sugar.

Five minutes later, I pulled the pumpkin bread from the oven.

It looked like pumpkin bread; it smelled like pumpkin bread, and when I took a bite, it tasted like ….

Something a Diabetic person would eat.

 I thought of tossing the loaf to the birds, but the more I sampled, the better it tasted. Then again, I eat burnt toast and pretend it’s good.

I won’t say anything and see if my husband notices.  

“House smells good,” my husband remarked as he entered the kitchen.

Seeing his road warrior face, I decided to bake another loaf of pumpkin bread. He deserves the best.

But after I opened the can, I noticed it was pumpkin mix instead of pumpkin puree. Are you kidding me?

I switched to Plan B and baked a pumpkin pie which I served for dessert instead of the pumpkin bread.

And then I ate half the pumpkin bread hoping to get rid of the evidence rather than admit another cooking fiasco.

The next day, I watched my husband eat a slice.

“Do you notice anything different?”

He studied the crumbs on his plate, trying to reconstruct in his mind what he’d eaten.

Before he could answer, I fessed up, “I forgot to add sugar!”

“Oh, I thought you were trying to be healthy.”

Sweet or not, we ate the pumpkin bread. The pie is gone too.

And when I told my mom the story, she said, “Sounds like another blog.”

“What’s the spiritual lesson?”

“People can profess Christ, they can go to church and pose as a Christian, but God sees the heart.”

Isn’t that the truth? God isn’t fooled. He recognizes a counterfeit. And he warns us:

“Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)