This weekend was apparently the first Advent. The first day of Advent? Adventing? I am not sure, but something related to that most beloved holiday of Christmas was already happening.

And apparently the activity to celebrate it properly, was baking. Cookies specifically. Now I normally do not really bake. There is 1 cheesecake recipe that is quick, convenient and easy to make. I will occasionally help out others, but I do not voluntarily bake.

I do not know exactly what about baking does not interest me a lot. I think it is the fact that you are not making a whole meal. Baking can take just as long as cooking, but then you have a cake. A whole cake. Which you then probably need to share. Sure, sharing is caring but at the same time, why? I can also just make food for myself. Let alone the fact that I feel it is even sadder if you spent hours working on baking something and it turns out average. Or worse, bad.

Also, thinking about baking I feel that there is in a certain sense less baking in the traditional Chinese kitchen. There are lots of sweets like mochi, buns, cookies, but I would not make them myself. I would buy them, a lot of people would. Because many homes did not have an oven, and also some of these sweets are very intricate and complicated. I would rather spend time queuing for that than making it myself and having sub-par taste.

But of course, my grumpiness can be mitigated with good company and easy tasks. Shaping the cookies and eating the raw dough bring me joy. I am not immune to the excitement that you can get by intently looking at the oven window, although currently my oven is placed so high I barely see anything that is in there, nor to the thrill of tasting a cookie. And not that much can go wrong in the end. So I will not bke voluntarily, but I will definitely help voluntarily.