Counting on Plan "B"

On Friday I used a recipe I found at the William-Sonoma website: Shrimp with Lemon en Papillote. It's shrimp, paprika, and lemon in a parchment paper bag steamed in the oven. I'd recommend it as it is or with this improvement: add some chopped andouille sausage. But let me caution you, the recipe says 10 minutes in the oven, but you should add another two or three minutes to the cooking time.

Needless to say, I know this because I had undercooked shrimp and once the parchment bag is broken, there's repairing it for another few minutes. So what to do? Revert to Plan "B." Even though the shrimp was poached, we tossed it in a hot skillet and finished it as a sauté. Was it as good as yours will be with extra cooking time? No, probably not. But it was good. Hurray for Plan "B."

Someone once said that most of life is Plan "B." We know what we want to do and the outcomes at which we're aiming, but things go wrong leaving us no choice but to quit or make the best of what we've got.

The family vacation to the beach ends up being on the rainiest week of the summer. So read, play games, and go out in the rain. As long as there's no lightening, you can even swim in the rain.

Your tee shot faded (let's be honest, it sliced) into the right ruff. Get out a 3-Wood and hit a brilliant recovery shot--or some kind of recovery shot at least. Move from almost unplayable to playable.

It's true in little things and it's true in big things. Life rarely goes according to Plan "A." How many of us who remember the Summer of Love are where we expected to be this many summers later? And nothing about that is going to change now that we're passing mid-life. The future will surprise us and require us to adjust plans, methods, and expectations.

We should by all means pursue Plan "A," but we can't forget contingency plans and we need to remember how to think on our feet. It is, I believe, one of the secrets to a good life after mid-life.