Pie

The Monday before Christmas, the youth group at the Cathedral braved the snow to bake pies for the Christmas party at Crosswalk, Spokane’s shelter for teenagers.  The youth group has a tradition of engaging in service projects in Advent.  Other projects this year were making Christmas presents and cards for shut-ins in the congregation and baking cookies for one of the agencies providing free meals in the area.  In past years, the youth group has wrapped presents for Crosswalk, but this year they asked us to bake pies.

Crosswalk asked us to bake pie for about 80 people, so we baked six pumpkin pies and six apple pies.  Because it had snowed the night before and the roads continued to be rather treacherous, we had not been sure that any of the youth would be able to come.  As it turned out, we had about six kids when we started baking the pies, around one in the afternoon, and another six or so trickled in over the course of the afternoon.

It took us about three hours to make the pies and clean up.  Michelle and Pia showed a couple of the kids how to make pie dough and I helped some others prepare the apples for the apple pies.  By about four in the afternoon, we had finished cleaning up and all the pies were either baking in the oven or were done.  We then had our present exchange.  Everybody brought a present and everyone had a turn to either open a present or steal a present someone else had opened.  I brought a card game and ended up with a set of really cool magnetic rocks.

After the present exchange, we had an early dinner, so the kids could leave before the roads all froze, and the kids trickled back home.  After we finished cleaning up, we went to the wholesale grocery store to buy eggnog and whipped cream, which we took to Crosswalk along with the pies.