The first few weeks after we began our stay-at-home orders, I derived a lot of enjoyment from seeing my loved ones’ faces on FaceTime, Zoom, Houseparty, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, and Instagram Video, or from communing over a good movie with Netflix Party or playing Drawful on Jackbox Games. My phone burned hot with all the new apps it was expected to run. I was able to show my parents how to schedule video meetings, and they in turn showed their friends. It was gratifying to learn about all the novel ways of connecting when we couldn’t be together.
But now we’re at the point where the novelty has long since worn off, and while seeing a never-quite-crisp image of friends and family continues to be an amazing feat of technology, there’s no replacing the energy and momentum of an in-person conversation. We need相声。我们需要无尽的中断。这就是为什么我的朋友圈全心全意地接受了一个小小的隔离传统：糕点通行证的原因。
我首先试图使“旅行锅的姐妹”这个名字起飞，但我不能很好地称呼这一点，因为事实证明这已经是一个名字食谱博客在互联网上的其他地方。我的下一个想法是“向前托盘”，但这似乎也被采取了（对于优越的原因消除学生午餐债务！）。因此，“糕点通行证”是。And that’s exactly what we do: One of us tests out some new recipe we’ve been meaning to try—something sweet like iced lemon bread, homemade Pop-Tarts, or double chocolate shortbread cookies—and if the batch turns out just right, it’s deemed Pastry Pass worthy. That’s when it goes into our红色的Ziploc塑料容器，然后驶向朋友的前门。他们收到赏金，品尝它，并与小组中的其他所有人分享图片。现在他们有了糕点通行证容器，取决于他们要烘烤的东西将其填充并将其传递给下一个朋友。
出于几个原因，糕点通行证一直是我们每周缩放日期的绝妙补充。在我们设计了这个系统之前，我没有感到烘烤的动力，因为任何厨房项目的乐趣中有80％都能够将其服务给其他人（20％的厨房项目正在舔碗）。现在，我有动力去尝试新食谱并从我的味觉测试者那里获得意见关于如何完善下一批。The delivery itself is even better: the brief conversations my friends and I are able to share from either end of their buildings’ front walkways have been the highlight of my week, infused with all the pent-up energy of wanting so badly to be boisterous with them in a way that no digital platform can render properly. Even through a mask, it’s a delight to hear their voices free of static, to have conversations devoid of the long artificial did-you-say-something pauses that video chat necessitates. One other surprising benefit of the Pastry Pass is that, because my neighborhood has a great range of grocery options within walking distance, delivering sweets to friends is the only time I’ve gotten behind the wheel of a car, keeping my driving skills up to snuff. (Apologies to anyone behind me as I trundle around Chicago’s arterial roads at 15 miles per hour,记住如何导航左转弯。）
如果您现在发现很难保持视频聊天中性面孔（几乎都在微笑，请随时准备大笑或点头，以弥补Zoom无法传达的微妙之处，烤东西。烤任何事物。烘烤美丽的。然后发短信给您的朋友，跳上车，并度过一天。这可能只是从草坪上进行的五分钟聚会，但它会为您带来又一周的能力，从而使您可以通过在一起来获得回忆。