Secret Love Nest '23 : The Paper Year

Recipe Swap?

Kaki is desperate. Its adorable how she's trying her best. And I won't deny it, I'm enjoying her efforts. Right now, as I type these words in my laptop, I'm enjoying a cup of tea with the last slice of tiramisu that Kaki gifted to me.

Its delicious. The tiramisu, I mean.

But its also delicious, how Kaki is woving her way into my heart to get me to surrender the recipe for my lemon bars.

(The famous lemon bars?)

Yes. My famous lemon bars. Kaki finally gets to try them when we had a potluck of some sort about a month ago and like many who have had it, Kaki fell in love with my lemon bars.

And she started an active campaign to get the recipe of them from me.

She was predictable in her efforts though. First, she tried buying the recipe.

Kaki: Sell it to me and I will take it to my grave. Only the two of us will know about the recipe. Wait! How about I rent it from you? The recipe. I'll pay you every month for it.

Me: What? No.

Kaki: Fine! Every week. I'll pay you rent every week for it. Just let me use it and sell your lemon bars.

Me: No.

Kaki: Ugh! Dayu ah! (looking around) Can someone help me please?! Anyone?

Six pairs of eyes turned away from her. Even Joi, her boyfriend, turned fidgety by her side while shaking his head.

Joi: Don't push it. Don't push Dayu that way.

Kaki: But why? Why? His lemon bars are phenomenal. We should sell it! It will sell like pancakes!

Me: Its not for sale.

Kaki: (whirling to face me) Why not?

Me: (shrugging) I don't need to make money from it. And I only bake them for several occassions or by special request. Mostly for my mother in law so she can brag about it.

Joi and Kaki, together with Jin, LiPin, XB and Lee, gave me stunned looks.

Our group consisting of eight people, met up for a little meal and get together. I should have known Kaki will take this opportunity to meet and probe me for the lemon bars recipe.

And I just shared to them that my mother in law use the lemon bars as some bragging piece.

LiPin: Your mother in law do that?

Qing: (snorting) And more. She loves bragging about Dayu. Its both a blessing and curse for me. On one side, she stopped bragging about me. On the other side, she loves monopolizing my husband.

Me: She's not monopolizing me. She just love the image of having a perfect family.

Joi: And you think thats normal?

Qing and I both shook our heads.

Me: But I will never rock the boat that is Madam Wang. As long as we let her do what she needs to do, she's happy and things are stable. I'm happy with stable.

Jin: (nodding) Seems fair. Stable is nice. Actually stable sounds fabulous.

We all eyed him with varying degree of wonder and pity. Jin's mother is still in recovery from a serious ordeal and thats all I will say about that. Just want to add that Jin and Jin's father are both there to support Jin's mother. Thats something good she and her family has going on.

Anyways, back to Kaki being desperate. In that get together, she bought black forest cake in that one, all for me.

Kaki: Go on, try it.