Missing Ingredients

September 9, 2011
I have learned that there are a lot of ingredients that seem so normal to us that the rest of the world has never heard of.  The other day I was trying to bake chocolate cookies because the ones I brought were long gone.  It turns out that it is absolutely impossible to find vanilla, in fact they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.  To me it seems like a kitchen staple like sugar that everyone has in their house.  So I went online and it turns out maple syrup is the perfect substitute for it.  Great news for me since I had just given my family maple syrup and they had no clue what to do with it.  Then another thing I had not thought of, measurement conversions.  I was guessing on every amount of the ingredients or rounding based on what I thought looked right.  Haha, not exactly the science of baking.  They ended up turning out MUCH different but they still tasted great. Today I cooked my host family lunch.  I made a cabbage salad and arugula pesto pasta.  They loved it.  They had never had a pesto kind of thing before so it was very special for them and my simple cooking look great.  The end product was great but from prior experience with the cookies I went to the market with ingredients for about 8 dishes, just in case I couldn't find one of the ingredients.  Next weekend when my host brother is home I will make a more American meal, not a Vermont one.