A glimpse into baking...

In honor of Burger's birthday, our one and only Polish friend that we have made since moving to Poland, is coming over to celebrate Burger's special day.  When I asked her if I was looking in the wrong places for chocolate chips for making cookies, I was slightly afraid I already knew the answer.  I was right... no semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips for baking cookies are going to be found in Poland, regardless of where I look.  When I mention baking the cookies, Alma's eye's lit up.  She said she hasn't had a chocolate chip cookie since she did her undergraduate in the US (can you imagine).  Alma asked if I knew how to make the dough and was so impressed when I said yes.  Anyone that knows me and my baking skills, knows it is far from impressive, so I was feeling REALLY GOOD about myself at this point lol.    


Now I really wanted to make Alma some chocolate chip cookies.  You know, because I "know how to make the dough" lol.  However, I only had one, single, solitary bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips that was shipped with our pantry items.  Oh the DILEMMA!  As luck would have it, our good friend Stan from the US came to visit and brought us four bags of semi sweet chocolate chips (Hershey no less!).  Feeling fully stocked with these little morsels I decided to make Alma chocolate chip cookies to take home after Burger's little birthday get together.

Time to gather up all the ingredients.  Thankfully after weeks of rebuilding our pantry, and the chocolate chips from Stan, I actually had everything I needed and could get right to work.  The only ingredient that I was a bit leery of was the flour.  I bought it right after getting a translator for my cell phone so I could look up names of items while shopping.  I fired up my fancy translator and quickly realized I was getting little to no data signal in the store so the app would not work.  Go figure, I finally had a translator on my phone and it was useless, so I had to do my best on my own anyway.  YAE, Technology!  

Oh well, how hard can buying flour be anyway?  Then I got to the isle.  This store has a bag of flour for nearly every kind of baking; from bread, to cake, to pastries, even special flour for pirogies!  In the states I was hard pressed to find simple unbleached, regular flour because the only choice is bleached white, all-purpose.  I was not expecting all of these choices.  In the end, I grabbed one bag of flour for baking bread (because I refuse to give up the dream that someday I might bake a bread that is edible) and I grabbed a bag of flour that I was hoping might be all purpose simply based on two criteria.  The first criteria I determined by standing back and looking at the shelves upon shelves of flour.  I figured the one with the most gone must be a good choice (haha).  The second criteria was solely based on the little pictures on the bottom of the bag and what I perceived them to mean. HA!

Moment of truth was here... time to make the cookies.  I pulled out my new favorite kitchen tool, the "TRANSFORMER", and went to work.  Unfortunately, by "transformer" I do not mean a device that turns my baking from bad to great. (Now that would be something!)    Also, these transformers are NOT "more than meets the eye" either.  They are merely a clunky, eyesore of a device that is in nearly every room of my new home.  Another bit of "newness" to get use to in our new surroundings.  The transformers are used to convert 220 volts to 110 volts so we don't fry every electronic device we brought with us from the U.S.  


As soon as I started mixing the wet ingredients with the dry I knew I must have the wrong flour.  The dough was grainy.  I thought about running to the store.  The days of running in and easily grabbing what I need were gone.  The obstacles ran through my head as I thought about going... All these tiny, zippy cars doing round-about thingies and U-Turns (which are LEGAL), and traffic signs that mean who knows what, roads that anyone on your right has the "right-of-way" which changes from road to road, and trams that occasionally end up in your lane... TAAAHH! ;-) Those are just the driving obstacles.  Lets not forget that if I actually make it through the drive then I still have the same flour choices starring me in the face at the store and if I want to ask for help I have to stumble through my inability to communicate in Polish.  This usually looks something like a charade show where I point at things, make symbols with my fingers, and basically look a fool hahaha.  So after imagining all that fun, I decided to roll with it... grainy cookies it is!  I hope Alma agrees with the saying, "it's the thought that counts". (lol)


Burger summed up my cookies well when he walked into the kitchen and said, "Holy smokes, they're burnt!"  Nope, not burnt just whole-wheat lol.  So for once I was not trying to bake anything healthy.  I simply wanted plain, bad for you, recipe-as-is chocolate chip cookies and as luck would have it, I end up with whole wheat.  Nothing is simple anymore.  

Alma really appreciated the cookies and actually said they are good.  Trust me she is being nice. Then she threw in a new cookie kink.  She asked me where I was able to find brown sugar.  "Um, it was in my pantry shipment, why?"  Of course this was her reply, "Oh, because you won't find brown sugar here either".  :-P