From Ashley

A very American moment:

My boss called me asking me to teach the other ladies how to make cookies and muffins. This to me seemed incredibly strange. Sure the younger girls might not know how to make cookies, but that’s just cause they’re young! We went on a trip to the Carrefour (the Wal-Mart of China so to speak) and it was crazy. The young and the older ladies had no idea what goes in cookies, what you need to make them, etc.

Mr. Wong asked me to show them how to make healthy cookies, so sure the best option was the applesauce oatmeal raisin cookies. Apparently Chinese people are unaware of what applesauce is because they kept trying to give me berry jelly calling it berry sauce. After I just decided to use regular cookie ingredients minus the applesauce, it was still hard to find things. We were in the imported foods section and they kept handing me like brownie mix, etc.

We finally went to the cooking utensil section, and I needed a muffin tray.  No one knew what I was asking for, and finally I found a mini one that was silicone. I had to get a measuring cup, potholder, muffin tray, etc. I didn’t even think about them not having a potholder or measuring cup or the like. I definitely didn’t remember to get Pam, but thankfully nothing stuck.

The oven was a disaster on it’s own. Apparently it’s not common to have an oven, so no one knew how to work it. I was handed the Chinese directions to figure it out, and apparently it was a Microwave/ oven. I’m not sure, still, but there was a bake option. However, like ever 4 minutes the oven turned off, so the first batch of cookies was super gooey for a long time.

Moral of the story, the cookies were bad, and the muffins were thrown away. I mean first off I’m not the best baker on the planet anyways, and then thrown in with all the cultural differences, not knowing how to work the oven, etc they were just bad. They all said they liked the cookies because they weren’t too sweet (fruit is the typical Chinese desert or in recent years ice cream has become popular). It still was just astonishing to me that none of them had made cookies. I feel very ignorant and American saying that, but it was an eye opening experience.