Our China Christmas: The Pasties

To make celebrating Christmas finally complete, we had to have pasties at least sometime that week. This favorite-to-the-Lofgren-household is something that almost always happens around holidays, especially if we're all together. It didn't surprise me in the least to hear it was the Christmas dinner of my parents and siblings who were in Alabama. 

 At Thanksgiving we even got the next generation involved as a lot of my sisters and sis-in-law made (I think) 20 pasties (half pies) to feed the whole gang. When you make so many, you want a lot of hands chopping and rolling and forming! Not only is the making of them special for memories like this, most of us think there's no better taste to be found than this homemade goodness.

To my surprise and delight, as we made friends with one of the American families in our complex, I discovered that they even knew what pasties were, and had the tradition of eating them at their grandmother's house! I rarely ever even find someone in the states who knows what they are, so it was pretty cool. Since that discovery, I kept meaning to have them over for pasties, but life happens...

For Christmas she had her parents in town, the daughter of that grandmother that made them for everyone, so I invited them all over for pasties. They had blessed us with many meals when we moved into our new apartment and upon our return from America, so I wanted to return the blessing in some way.

Much joy and enjoyment was had by all, as we swapped stories of relatives and pasties and memories of when we would have them. It made the holidays truly feel complete, to have a reason to make 6 pasties (though I had to cook two pans of them at my friend's house as our oven is too small!) and have a group to share it with.

So thankful for a wonderful Christmas season here in China!