After a recent visit from a friend, I realized that I've been so wrapped up in my transition into life in China that I haven't been actively looking for ways to bless the people around me. It's easy to try and show a stranger kindness, but I had been looking over the people in my community, trying to get them out of my way so I could see other opportunities to love on people. This was a really harsh reality for me, realizing how selfish my heart has become during my fight to survive and adapt to my new...everything. I started praying for the Father to change my heart and show me ways to serve my brothers and sisters in love.
There is one particular family that has been a.b.s.o.l.u.t.e.l.y amazing since I got here. They have opened their home to me, fed me, given me a place to sit and cry, encouraged me, and loved me. They have been such a blessing to me! Normally I invite myself over for dinner/out for coffee, or somehow finagle an invite out of them. I decided that this time I would bring dinner when I invited myself over. We set a date and time, and I was pretty excited to spend some time with them!
Now, I'm not the most domestic person in the world. I've caught multiple dish towels on fire while cooking, I've ruined instant mashed potatoes, and I've forgotten things in the oven more than once.
With that in mind, this was my pot pie making experience:
First of all, I'm still new enough to China that grocery shopping is an all day event and I usually come back with nothing on my shopping list, but lots of things I didn't know I needed until they called to me from the shelf (in Chinese). It's actually not any different than my shopping trips in the States, now that I think about it. ANYWAY, I decided to go shopping on Monday so I would have everything I needed and I wouldn't have to do it at the last minute. On Tuesday I had some free time in the evening, so I went ahead and cut the veggies and laid out all of the things I would need the next afternoon.
To make a long story not-so-long, I was later than expected leaving school on Wednesday, didn't have any taxi money, phone died when I tried to send a frantic text to the friend whose sweet family was expecting dinner, and had to borrow money from my TA to get home.
Fast forward a 30 minute taxi ride.
I got home about an hour later than anticipated, so I was a little frazzled. I turned on the dinosaur we call an oven to preheat and opened the fridge to grab my nice pre-cut veggies. APPARENTLY you shouldn't cut potatoes the day before, because my once beautiful little white potato cubes were now a really gross brown color. But I thought, "Jai you!" and decided to use them anyway and prayed no one would notice. Oven is preheating...chicken is cooking on the stove...time to roll out the dough for the crust. I thought, "I'll save a step and roll the dough onto wax paper, then I can just flip it into the pan and save time!" So I rolled not one but two crusts onto wax paper and began to mix the ingredients for the filling, brown potatoes and all. The recipe I know in my head uses cups, but all of our measuring tools here are metric, but my phone was still dead and refusing to charge and my computer wasn't handy, so I didn't know how to convert c to ml. Gah! I checked the oven to see if it was heated, not that it matters because there isn't a real dial with degrees on it, but rather a dial with 1-8 and a needle thermometer inside that I don't really trust. I thought 7 sounded good, so I put the dial there and went back to my crust.
Ooooooh, the pie crust. When I flipped it into the pan and tried to shake it free from the paper, I started to realize this might have been a bad idea. When I shook the paper and then tried unsuccessfully to peel the crust off, I confirmed that it was a bad idea. So I scraped the dough off of the wax paper, threw the dough ball into the bottom of the pie pan, and smooshed it around the best I could. Whatever. It's on the bottom of the pan so it's not like anyone's going to see it. The top crust, by some miracle, wasn't as stuck as the first so I was able to cover most of the top with it. Then I used dough remnants to patch together the rest. My students have made many a pie with play doh, and I've never seen anything this ugly. At this point, I was already going to be late for dinner so I threw it into the oven, said a quick "please don't burn" prayer, and went about cleaning up. A while later I decided maybe 7 was too hot, so I tried to turn it down to 5 1/2. Why did I mess with the dial? I don't know. The gas turned off and wouldn't turn back on. What a disaster.
Before I ran out the door with my mostly cooked pot pie, I grabbed a potato that was poking through the...ahem....less than perfect top crust and sure enough, it was still crunchy. Of course. Perfect. I grabbed some cookie dough from the freezer (that thankfully a really wonderful cook gave me for Christmas) and figured if the pot pie was a flop we could order McDonalds delivery and eat cookies while we waited.
15 minutes late for dinner, I speed walked to their building. I shouldn't be surprised that I dropped the cookie dough on the way there, but thankfully it was double wrapped. I don't think I could eat even the most delicious cookie after it's touched the ground in China. Finally made it to their building...elevator to the ninth floor....realized I was in the wrong building....facepalm....elevator back down to the first floor.....backtrack one building....elevator up to the ninth floor....
The story has a happy ending. We all had a good laugh about my failed cooking experience, and the pot pie was surprisingly edible. Some miracle must have happened on the way to their house, because the potatoes were done. Their kids even asked for seconds! Phewf! Then we ate cookies, had more fun conversation, and all of the drama was totally worth it. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment