Cheryl on the Web

For the first half of yesterday (Thursday), I had a feeling that I’d regressed in time to the caveman era, where the men were the hunters and the women were the gatherers. I spent most of my morning trying to “gather” canned pumpkin for a pumpkin pie.. without success :( It turns out that in this entire vicinity, the only pumpkin to be had is either a whole pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, or sweet-sour pumpkin in a glass jar.

Luckily I did manage to gather most of the other things I needed, down to the cranberries (got the last box at the 5th supermarket I visited); the baking soda (got this on a return trip to the supermarket in the afternoon, turns out the stuff is available here but it’s called Natron); and the chocolate chips (had to laugh at the small size of the chocolate chip packages, 1 package is 75g so I had to buy 3 of them for the recipe).

After the groceries were done, I started right in on food preparation. I was making the sweet stuff yesterday and the “real” food today (Friday). So first on the list were the Pears in Red Wine (don’t know the proper American term for this). Basically, you start with red wine, add spices, then add the pears and cook them around 10 min. That went relatively well - the only bump in the road was that one of the pears wasn’t ripe enough so I ended up having to boil it extensively after I’d already finished the others just to get it soft enough… I have a feeling that that pear will be a bit tough! The wine smelled lovely though after I’d added the cloves, cinnamon stick, etc.

Next on my list was cranberry relish. For this I was supposed to use a food processor to chop the cranberries but since I don’t have one I used a “staff” mixer (long and skinny, don’t know the word?). I did the same thing last year so I wasn’t expecting any problems. Unfortunately, this year for some reason I decided to use a different bowl - a diep but wide bowl as opposed to the long skinny plastic can designed for the mixer. One second into the cranberry shredding and there was cranberry and sugar all over the room. It was amazing, something out of the movies but not something I ever thought I’d experience. Mom asked if I cried - answer is, no, I actually thought it was pretty cool! I’m not bothered by kitchen messes, I make them every time I cook - this one was just a bit of an exception.

Speaking of kitchen messes…

This attempt at a panoramic of the counter should give you at least some idea of what I was up against halfway through my adventures yesterday! This was *before* I made the monster cookies…

The monster cookies, by the way, turned out relatively well, especially considering that I am not equipped for the industrial-size cooking that this entailed. It wasn’t until I got halfway through cooking that I realized I should have halved the recipe! Check out the picture on the right of the mixing bowl - I added another 3 cups of oats after this so you an just imagine the mess. They taste great but I have about 150 of them! I told Tim we’re going to have to start mailing them to the relatives and he said that would be too “domestic”, sigh.