Send Them. Immediately.

I got the first Wechat message in the afternoon.  In the old days, what did we do when we suddenly found ourselves at school without something we needed?   We endured I suppose, unless it was something of critical importance that would justify getting on the school phone to dial a parent at work who was highly unlikely to want to deliver you anything more than a rebuke.  My younger one wanted me to find the ‘pie and tart’ book she had recently secured, find the pecan pie and the key lime pie pages, photograph them and send them.  Immediately. 

Fortunately for her I knew where the book was and found the pages easily enough.  Photos taken, recipes sent.  It’s still jarring to hit with a must-do offspring request in the middle of the day, much as it was for my father, but certainly this was a minimal amount of effort to address her need.  She wrote back later in the day from the store.  “Each page is asking for stuff on another page.  Can you send that too?  I did.  Again, the effort was minimal.  But I suspect that reliance on things like Wechat, while wildly convenient is also meaning we put less thought into planning.  

She came home with a remarkable assortment of ingredients and quickly commandeered the kitchen.  She needed to bake a range of goodies for the bake sale the next day at school.  This project was raising money for their entrepreneurial school project, which she and her classmates were launching.  Later, after she sold her goods, she was responsible for determining how much she spent and how much she made to ascertain if the venture had been profitable.

You can’t get heavy cream or half and half easily where we live in China.  Which means you likely can’t find it anywhere in China.  So her key lime pie with fresh whip cream was not going to happen.  I got deputized around 11:00PM to make an apple pie.  Fortunately we had the tail end of a box of apples someone had brought for Lunar New Year here at our house.  Cinnamon, check.  Brown sugar, yup.  “Have you got more pie crust dough?”  She did. 

My daughter was aghast that I could wing something like a pie.  “Don't you want to look at the recipe?”  “Nah.”  I chopped the apples, added ‘some’ cinnamon, water and sugar and simmered it till it was a juicy poultice and dumped it in the pie tin with the dough crust spread out, ready to receive it.  There was enough dough left over to make little play-dough snakes that we flattened out and cut into strips that could be crisscrossed across the top.  We did this and we had fun with it, but it was a bit rough looking, not at all like the cover of the pie and tart book.   I don’t know if this will effect sales, but I suspect not.                   

Thursday, 02/09/17