Shari and the Apple Pies

You need to understand the difference.  Baked goods are a big deal here in Mexico.  Sweet bread, cakes, doughnuts, buns – and if you go to a few birthday parties you’ll see cakes baked and decorated beyond belief.

Baking, on the other hand, is not big in Mexico.  You go to the store for the baked goods, you don’t pull them out of your oven. In fact, some people store dishes in their oven.

So a bunch of the ladies of the church got together at Tania’s house to learn how to make apple pies.  And boy did they have fun.

Crystal brought her Mamita’s super-duper-home-baked recipe from the USA.  They managed to round up a few rolling pins from who knows where.  Shari brought some mini-cookie cutters to make the crust fancy.  And Tania invited some ladies from her neighbourhood.

They chopped up the apples.  Crystal made sure they got the filling right.  Shari got everyone making the perfect flaky crusts (in most cases!).

Crystal with a completed apple pie

 Some of the ladies were introduced to Jesus for the first time.  And everyone made new friends.

Now they’re thinking of doing an encore performance – with some of the ladies who were running things and didn’t get to see all the “pie making secrets”.  So the story may not be over yet!

As a side note, it looks like there will be some other baking going on here next week.  Two months or so ago, Hannah and a girl from our neighbourhood were around the house, and I offered them some apple dumplings.  Ever since that day, the girl has been bugging her Mom to make her some "apple pie" like she had at Hannah’s house.  So her Mom knocked on our door and talked to Shari about coming over for an apple pie/dumpling lesson.

In my opinion, there’s nothing like making friends with food involved.  And if I’m not doing it myself, I’ll be hoping to catch some of the leftovers!