In an old cookbook that smelled of vanilla and distant memories, strange things happened during the nights. As soon as the last door in the house clicked shut and silence prevailed, the pages rustled and little characters came to life, characters nobody knew about. There was the brave Soup Ladle, let's call her Lisa, and her smaller, cautious friend, the Tea Spoon named Teaky.
One night they discovered a recipe they had never seen before. It was written in golden ink and was called "Recipe for Soul-Cheering Soup." "Look, Teaky!" whispered Lisa, her silver head gleaming in the moonlight. "This soup supposedly heals every sadness! We must find it and preserve it for children who will need it."
Teaky hopped closer. "That's a wonderful idea, Lisa! But..." he paused and pointed with his tiny tip at the paper. "Look, something's missing here."
And indeed. Next to each ingredient – carrots, parsley, flour, water, salt – there was only a smudged blot. The numbers that indicated how much of each ingredient to add had disappeared.
"Oh no!" Lisa wrung her hands. "How will we figure out how much flour or water we need? What if we add too much salt and the soup becomes oversalted? Or too few carrots and it won't be sweet?"
Teaky pondered. "Let's try to estimate. I'll scoop some flour and you measure the water."
As he said, so they did. Teaky spun around a hundred times while carrying a pile of flour with his small spoon. Lisa meanwhile tried to scoop water into her large head, but half of it always spilled out. Their attempt ended in failure and a small white puddle on the kitchen counter.
"This won't work," Lisa sighed. "We need help. We need someone who understands measurements and numbers."
Then she remembered. On the highest shelf, where sunlight didn't reach and dust settled only rarely, stood the old wise Mrs. Scale. It was said about her that she knew the secret of every grain and every drop.
"Let's go to Mrs. Scale!" Lisa decided.
The journey was adventurous. They had to climb over a wall of plates, jump across a stream of spilled tea, and finally struggle to climb up the handle of a large knife to reach the upper shelf.
Mrs. Scale was dozing. She was an old, honest mechanical scale with a large dial and one long, thin hand.
"Mrs. Scale, please wake up!" squeaked Teaky.
The Scale lazily opened one glass eye on the dial. "Who disturbs me from my sleep of perfect balance?" she grumbled in a deep, creaking voice.
Lisa quickly explained their problem with the lost recipe. Mrs. Scale measured them with her gaze. "Ah, another pair who think 'a little' and 'by eye' is enough. Precision, dear spoons, precision is the foundation of everything! Without it, cooking is just chaos."
"But we want to be precise! We just don't know how," Lisa defended herself.
The wise Scale smiled, making her hand gently bounce. "Very well then. I'll help you. Bring me the flour."
Lisa and Teaky carefully slid the flour bag onto her pan. The hand on the dial spun and stopped exactly at the number 200. "See?" said the Scale. "For soul-cheering soup you need exactly two hundred grams of plain flour. Not a spoonful, not a handful. Two hundred grams."
The spoons were breathless with amazement. Similarly, Mrs. Scale weighed the salt for them – just five grams – and sugar for flavoring. "We're done with weight. But for water, my wisdom isn't enough. We don't measure water in grams, but in liters and milliliters. You must go to the Measuring Cup Family, which hangs there on the hook."
Lisa and Teaky thanked her and were already rolling toward the cheerful group of transparent measuring cups of various sizes that clinked merrily against each other.
"Hooray, visitors!" cheered the largest, one-liter measuring cup. "What can we do for you?" When the spoons explained that they needed to measure water, the measuring cups immediately got to work.
"This soup needs one and a half liters of water," said the largest measuring cup and filled herself to the brim. "That's one liter." "And I'll add half!" cheered the smaller, five-hundred-milliliter cup, and poured exactly to the line marked 500 ml. "Together that's a liter and a half. See how simple it is when we work together?"
Lisa and Teaky were delighted. With the help of Mrs. Scale and the Measuring Cup Family, they managed to complete the entire recipe. Each ingredient had its precise number. Triumphantly, they returned to the cookbook and with the pen that lay nearby, wrote all the measurements in their place with golden ink.
The recipe was finally complete. But when they finished writing the last number, they noticed at the very bottom of the page another sentence, written in small letters:
"And at the very end, when everything is precisely measured, add a handful of shared joy."
Lisa and Teaky exchanged glances and smiled. They understood. The most important ingredient wasn't in any jar or bag. It was the joy of working together, helping each other, and overcoming problems. That was the real magic for healing sadness.
And perhaps you too will someday discover with mommy or daddy how fun it is to measure and weigh, and find that the best-tasting food is what's cooked with love and shared joy.