the cooking extrvaganza

Well, today I decided my "the errand" should be more of an adventure. And for some reason I've really been craving banana bread (maybe because i eat about 3 bananas every day?). So, as a result of nothing better to do I decided today was a great opportunity to do this. I woke up at about 10, which is VERY early for me these days. I have no real obligations until practice at 7pm so with a solid 9 hours to kill before practice, I set out for the store.

I had to ask one of my teammates what the ingredients were called in serbian, or else I would have gotten all of the wrong things (Thanks Sandra!). Even though I now had the information that brasno was flour and bikarbona soda is baking soda it still took me about an hour (no joke) to round up all of the ingredients. I swear the store was hiding these things from me. For example, who would have thought the vanilla would be next to the straws? I also could NOT find a measuring cup, but decided I could rig something up at the apartment that would work. 

I lugged all of my items home from the store (I went to the far market because there was a better chance they'd have everything) which took about 15 minutes...which is a LONG time when you're carrying the equivalent of a toddler in the weight of the food. When I got back it took me about 15 or 20 minutes to convert the recipe to milliliters, ounces, and celsius oven temperature. By this time its sort of a miracle that I'm still so committed. 

My answer to a measuring cup is that I get a water bottle that I know is 250 mL, then convert that to ounces to convert to cups. Then I fill up a kitchen cup to that amount to use as a reference, and then fill another cup to the same height. This gets repeated for every ingredient, which begins to add lots of time to baking. 

reference on the left, sugar on the right

I also didn't think about the fact that I don't really have the proper bowls, containers etc. so I had to just adjust. The biggest bowl I had was overflowing with egg sugar! 

notice the egg sugar that has jumped overboard in the process

so by this point i'm ready to start making bets that this is NOT going to turn out well. There is also another issue I run across. When I asked for vanilla, the woman at the store pointed me to a powder form of vanilla in the pudding aisle, with a picture that resembled flan. uh-oh. this is definitely NOT the vanilla I've come to know and love. Did this lady know what I was asking for? As I continue to wander the aisles, I stumble upon a little jar that says vanilla, but I don't know exactly what it is. So what do I do? I buy two and hope for the best. So here they are, let me know which one you would have chosen: 

a) the mystery vanilla liquid located far away from all other cooking items 

          ...or...

b) the suspicious Mexican flan powder

which did I choose? (drumroll please......) THE LIQUID!! I figured if they were BOTH mysteries, then at least I should choose the one that seemed less mysterious. So who knows exactly what it is, but its ok. 

I put the concoction in my newly-purchased pan (didn't have one) and threw it in the oven. 40 minutes later it's done and I am devouring it. awesome. I made two to take one to my team because they've never heard of it. If they're going to teach me things about here, then isn't it kinda my responsibility to teach them about home? I hope they like it!!