Thursday, September 30, 2010

American treat for the presentation




Each of the presenters was to bring a food snack to share from their native country.

We decided to bake brownies. (Thanks again to my friend David for sending us a box of brownie mix in a care package!)

What would normally be no trouble at all was, of course, more complicated.

The first issue was to figure out what temperature to set the oven. (I still think in Fahrenheit.) While I did manage to find/buy a measuring cup -- it is in liters and grams -- so that needs conversion as well. And, then there's the ingredients. Normally I would grease the bottom of the pan with crisco, but I have not found this here. So I greased the bottom of the pan with butter. (Or, margarine? Who knows?) I think I was using sunflower (not vegetable) oil -- but -- I could only tell you for sure if I could read Russian. I don't have any measuring spoons, so I estimated the tablespoons. I improvised until the batter looked "normal" -- poured it into the round (!) "pan" -- and hoped for the best. (I also didn't have any toothpicks to check to see if the brownies were done -- which is ironic since we've seen toothpicks at every restaurant we have eaten at in Chisinau.)

Despite the issues with the uncertainty of the ingredients (and their quantity) -- and using a round pan -- without being able to check to see if the brownies were baked -- they actually turned out well. We all enjoyed them -- and wanted more!

It must be impossible not to bake yummy brownies with a boxed mix! The beauty (and tasty-ness) of American ingenuity

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