The Unfortunate Gift

By Jane Farrell

I’m never ungrateful, but I’m making an exception now. Last Christmas, a neighbor gave me a jar filled with chocolate chips, walnuts, pecans and a mysterious white substance. Of course, the jar was a Mason (in theory, to be reused when drinking homemade iced tea on one’s veranda) and it bore a folksy label: Aunt Etta’s Honest-to-Goodness, Lick-Your-Lips, Drunk Chocolate Nut Pie Mix. I don’t know who Aunt Etta is, but the label indicated that she was linked to some culinary corporation with offices in Oklahoma City and Des Moines.

To make yourself the pie, the label said, you just added eggs, butter, vanilla, cinnamon, Southern Comfort (to taste) and an uncooked pie shell. That’s what the label said. Add an uncooked pie shell.

All this would have had much more meaning for me if I ever turned on a stove or an oven. Here is my kitchen skill: I can cut a perfect one-inch slit in a Lean Cuisine overwrap. (I tweeted this when “kitchen skill” was trending on Twitter, and the Lean Cuisine account retweeted me. True story.)

And while I’m not Julia Child, I am, like her, unafraid to break the rules. You know how it says on microwave cartons to cook for three minutes, stir and then cook for two more minutes? I don’t do that. If you cook it for five minutes straight, it comes out just the same.

So you can see why a cute Mason jar filled with lip-smackin’ ingredients isn’t for me.  I don’t think it’s for anyone. In fact, it’s kind of mean. It’s like giving someone a few pieces of fabric and instructions on how to make a scarf. Just give me the scarf already.

Anyway, a few months went by. The jar sat on a shelf, an unwanted, reproachful guest. I kept thinking that I would have to make it eventually and bring it over to my neighbor. Then I decided to tell her I had gobbled it all up myself.

And that’s sort of true. I’d broken open the jar and over the next few days, worked my way through the layers of chocolate chips, walnuts and pecans. (Missing: the Southern Comfort and the uncooked pie shell.) I finally reached the bottom ingredient, that enigmatic white powder I’d been looking at since Christmas. I had a crazy hope that it would be, oh, I don’t know – marshmallow cream or cookie dough. Something that would require only one simple ingredient – say, water or milk – to bring it into being.

Of course it was flour. (I know that because there was a recipe inside that explained everything.) I understand from my friends who bake that flour, in and of itself, isn’t good for snacks. Instead, you sift it with an implement known as a sieve in order to bake pies, cakes and cookies. Let me tell you, if I had to prepare flour for Aunt Etta’s pie, or for anything else, I’d skip the sifting. It’s like stirring the microwave meal halfway through cooking. You don’t have to do it. No one will notice.

I’ve still got that flour on my shelf, waiting for one of my baking friends to stop by and do what’s supposed to be done with it. And it’s still in its quaint Mason jar, because there’s no drinking homemade iced tea in this house. Usually, I just buy Diet Pepsi. Much easier to prepare.