Cooking Lesson

My once-a-week house helper, above, taught me to make baozi (bow-zuh) yesterday. Baozi is steamed bread with meat and vegetable filling. She told me it would be easy. But when I found out it wasn't easy, I stopped paying attention. Not much chance of me ever making these from scratch. Mimi was kind of paying attention though.

When I realized that the dough is made with yeast and is basically the same dough recipe you'd make for, say, cinnamon rolls, I wanted to bring this cooking lesson to an abrupt halt and make breakfast instead. Because if you're going to go to that much trouble to make something, it ought to be something mouth-watering.

I can buy baozi on the street for about 30 cents each, so that's what I'll be doing next time I want to eat one.