Lately I have been attempting to improve skills I possess while stuck in Jordan with nothing much to occupy me. I know I can cook well; many reviews from friends and family confirm this. My baking skills however are lacking severely. I think it has to do with mathematics, my archenemy. With cooking entrees, many things can be "eyeballed" or to the taste; alot of things can be substituted, adapted or interpreted. With baking however, there really is no such thing as eyeballing the ingredients; doing so can ruin a perfectly good recipe. 1 cup, 1/3 of a cup, 2 tbsp, 3 liters, etc etc etc. All numbers, all exact... all plotting against me. The ingredients I had come to love in entree cooking hate me when I associate them with baking powder or eggs. Cornstarch, flour, sugar, milk (and wtf is cream of tartar??) In baking there is no substitution, or very little chance of it. Its even worse when you live in a country that has never even HEARD of some of your very normal ingredients that you took for granted back home.
Jordan, this is cream of tartar:
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| You have the brand, how come you don't have THIS? |
Ontop of which, ovens here are not electric. Unless you make 2 grand per month, you can't even think of an electricity bill that could cover an electric oven (don't get me started on electric washers/dryers and AC). All are run on propane, and you can imagine trying to bake cookies on a camping stove. Its like that. Its even hard to make the classic entrees I'm an expert at making without burning it, overcooking it, undercooking it, or taking an hour when it should take 20 minutes. Its not just the oven, its the cookware. Unless you can shell out 80 dinar (which is 160 bucks in the US) when you only make 350JD per month, you are using the wedding cookery some family member got you that should only serve as decoration. Hence overcooking and burning by the ton. Even when you do have these, like at my mother-in law's house, we're missing one essential thing: mixing bowls. Now anything, you say, can be used as a mixing bowl. Yes, and nooooo. Yes when its a spoon or spatula; no, when its a hand mixer. Today was proof, when my sloppy lemon frosting was pit all over the walls and floor of the kitchen (the one I spent cleaning all day yesterday) Since last week I have been attempting lemon bars, one of my favorites. The first was a tasty disaster. The second attempt in Irbid at my friend Aubrey's house, though thin, was a great success. Last night they looked even better, but with the cream cheese additive to temper the sugar amounts, we lost much flavor. Younger bro in law wouldn't eat it, and I couldn't stop him from eating the 2nd batch before. I intend to, despite my baking history and missing items, be the bakerwoman from Drury Lane by the time I return to the States.
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| Miss you guys.... :-( |
On a more somber note, every time I go to the store here I am painfully reminded of something that's missing or different. Last week it was corn meal; 2 days ago it was a martyr.
Victims and refugees from Duraa routinely make it to Ramtha for aid and asylum. Sadly, many of them only come here to die. 2 days ago Issam Ali Alfashtki escaped to Ramtha only to die later on that day. Residents declared him a martyr or "shaheed" and began a funeral procession the next day to bury him in the local cemetery as getting his body back to a bombed out Duraa was next to impossible. Having a shaheed buried near your relatives is like being buried in the holy land soil of the Sedlec Ossuary (Sedlec Ossuary) or Church of Bones, so naturally those involved considered it an honor. All except a few. In Ramtha there is a small tribe of people who identify as Shia, and as the Shia have been big supporters of Syrian Basha, especially Hezbollah, most of them do not celebrate the dead as martyrs but as traitors. As the funeral procession began, members of this tribe threw trash, stones, and excrement at the body and funeral party. The man was eventually buried, but the outrage caused a protest today at the town Capital building to insist upon the culprits being forced to apologize and make up for their behavior. My brother witnessed it on his way back from school today. In Ramtha, we hear fireworks every night since the spring started; its wedding season. In Syria, the exploding sound is greeted differently, and lights in the sky signal terror. My heart goes out to those suffering people, who could have easily been my husband and his family had the border been just a few miles further inland.
U.N. May Lose Ceasefire
Syrian Citizen Mass Exodus
it stinks that baking is so difficult there, I never thought that that would be so tough. We need to send you some of those (just add water) baked goods :)
ReplyDeleteGood morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favour:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Jordan? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Jordan in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez