(for those who care, I think I may have finally fixed the photo upload issue! I changed themes and updated some permalinks. And Ta-Da! You can now view a lovely picture of the subject of this post below)

I thought this might be a good time to share a funny story from our early days in East Asia (EA). It’s common where we lived for foreigners (us – Americans foreign to EA) to hire a “helper”: a young Asian woman to help cook, grocery shop, clean and even take care of the kids. Because we both had full time jobs (language learning) once we arrived in EA, this tradition was a welcome gift to our family! Of course we jumped on the opportunity to have some much needed help around the house!

Our supervisor and his wife helped us find and negotiate the terms of employment with a local lady. I was nervous about having this lady in our home – first of all, I didn’t speak the language, like AT ALL. How was I going to tell her what needed to be done each day or ask her questions or give her direction? I was told having a helper can greatly increase your language skills – I was about to find out how quickly.

Sometime in mid-October the weather began to change to chilly fall days. This day I was in the mood for some chicken pot pie! It reminded me of home and would warm us up after a full day of being out on the electric bike around town. One of the responsibilities of our helper was to make dinner for our family on the days she worked. My friend had given me a cookbook with English on one side of the page and the local language on the other. I could flip through the book and point and gesture to the page and manipulate the conversation with what little language skills I had. I felt confident in my plan!

I found “Chicken Pot Pie” on page 16. It required several steps: cooking and deboning a chicken, chopping multiple veggies, making the roux using the chicken broth and making the crust. For the crust it referred the reader to page 42 for the recipe. Page 42 was the recipe for a basic pie crust, also the page for pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread. You might see where this is headed….

I spent about 15 minutes explaining the recipe, going over the shopping list, showing her the tools and utensils she might need. I told her we would like to eat around 5:30. I left for class and felt very excited about my ability to have this conversation and make a delicious homemade meal happen for my family, even though I was not the one making it. I told David about our dinner plans and he seemed doubtful – what could go wrong, I asked? She has the recipe, I went over it with her (after having studied the new words over the weekend to prepare). It was gonna go great!

Fast forward to 4:20pm… As we exit the elevator at the floor to our apartment, we smell heaven! It’s the best thing we have smelled since arriving in this country four months earlier. (EA is full of nose-assaulting smells) It’s like a crisp fall/thanksgiving/christmas meal – all in one. I looked at David and smiled – “told ya! Nothing to worry about! It smells perfect.” Boy was I wrong.

My helper told me everything would be finished cooking in about 25 minutes. From the looks of the kitchen, she had put her whole self into this dish. Flour on the counter, mixing bowls and cutting boards in the sink, a chicken carcass in a bag, and what looked like squash skins in the trash??? What in the world? I suddenly felt a little wary of what exactly had happened in my kitchen and what was cooking in my oven. But, I thanked her profusely for all of her hard work and assured her that we would really enjoy our dinner.

As soon as the timer went off, I opened the door and discovered our meal:

I didn’t have words. My mind couldn’t even process what I was looking at: pieces of what appeared to be pumpkin bread, filled with chicken pot pie roux, and topped with chopped veggies. It smelled amazing – cinnamon, nutmeg, oregano, onions and pumpkin all in one. But the visual was something totally unexpected. David walked into the kitchen and threw the words back at me: “told ya!” I had to swallow my pride and figure out a way to swallow our dinner. It wasn’t at all what we were expecting, but in the end we enjoyed the efforts of her hard work. Once we got past the texture, it wasn’t that bad and it remains a laughable memory for our family.

Lessons learned:

• It’s probably best to give simple recipes that are confined to ONE page
• cooking here is hard! She had to go to the market to buy the chicken, wash, cook and debone it. She had to go to a different market for the veggies, disinfect, peel, chop and cook them. She had to make the pie crust – which ended up being pumpkin bread made from FRESH pumpkin/squash (whatever she could find bc pumpkin wasn’t common there) meaning she had to COOK the squash, mash the squash and somehow melt it into a bread recipe.
• one weekend of recipe terminology study does not an expert make
• I needed to get used to finding the silver lining in the unexpected – a lesson that would continue to serve me well over the next 3 years to come.

I make chicken pot pie for my family all the time in the fall and winter months, and not a time passes that I’m not tempted to throw in some pumpkin bread, just for old times sake. It’s a sweet memory that humbles me and makes me smile, as well as appreciate the EASE of cooking in America!