Yam grilling is always the best. One day my aunt asked me to go to Indian grocery store to get some yams and for some reason, the store only has big yams which are bulky and seems more like foods for elephant rather than for humans. I still took them and eagerly came home. My aunt was also surprised “What kind of yam is it ?!”. When the day comes (when we feel like we want to eat yams which has a short period of preservation), I cut them into round slices and turned on the oven. Added some salt on top of the yams, I threw them into the oven and started practicing my patience of waiting for a batch of mouth watering grilled yams to come. In my imagination, the outside layer should be a little dark while inside, it should be soft and still purple. 30 minutes had gone by but when I checked, the yams was still very hard. Another 20 minutes passed, nothing changed. I was left with all confusion because conventionally, they will be edible after a quarter of hour. My aunt guessed that because the slices are too big and thick, it takes longer. Then I kept waiting more to a point I was frustrated and left the heat to do something else. For a while (about an hour) I came out to check and nothing seems better. I concluded that keeping doing the same thing was not a solution. Our interest in tasting smokey yams had already gone away too. I still wondered what caused this failure though, was it because of the yams or of the oven? We were busy with other stuff during the day and did not pay attention to this affair any more. And we did not throw the yams away yet. Later in the day, my uncle tried it and realized it was not cooked. He checked and understood that because the heat was too low and the oven was set in warm instead of bake. Oh dear! How could I not check that and not even doubt that. Simply I thought we kept the same level of heat all the time. But then the lesson I got goes beyond the yams and way more interesting. I learnt that everything in life, if it’s heated but not enough, nothing will happen. Seems like without care, attention and whole heart, things are just mildly done and no fruitful result is to come. The oven was turned on, time passed, thought a good formula but turned out not. Doing is not enough, doing it wholeheartedly matters even more. If we want to live our lives to the fullest, never ever do something with not enough heat!
