In an effort to make this Christmas especially memorable for our family, I have been doing some Christmas meal preparations, including the traditional Christmas baking. I’m finding, though, that traditions are somewhat location-specific; some don’t easily translate to another hemisphere.
It began with the shopping for ingredients. I’m the sort of shopper who frequents a handful of grocers, and I know which aisle holds the catsup in any of them. I also have my favorite go-to recipes for which I always keep the necessities on hand, and I can find tortellini, chick peas, and canned tomatoes in any store in Tulsa. Here, though… well, here it’s a bit different. At the store the other day I looked for canned pumpkin on the baking aisle, then on the canned vegetable aisle. Nothing. So Katy took over and asked a clerk. “Canned what?” she said. “Pumpkin.” “What’s it for?” she asked. Then, “Wait, I’ll go ask my manager.” He came over and said he used to work for the canned food company and he’d never seen anything like canned pumpkin. “Would this work?” he asked, trying to be helpful, but holding out a can of cream of pumpkin soup. Hmm. No pumpkin bread this year. No green bean casserole, either, as French fried onions are equally as exotic to the Kiwi palate. Next item was molasses for gingerbread. We found it, but not without some quizzical looks by store clerks, and an offer of molasses granules instead of syrup.
Once I had the ingredients I needed for the remaining items still on our holiday menu, I had to figure out how to get around in the kitchen. Knowing that our moving crate will be here in a week or two, I don’t want to buy duplicates, so I’m trying to get by with as little as possible. The kitchen came with a handful of gadgets, and I bought a hand mixer, some cookie sheets, a large mixing bowl, and a spatula. Sifted flour? No problem—I can use the colander. Egg whites? OK, I can separate eggs using the shells. Rolling pin for gingerbread? Hmmm…. Beth solved this problem by suggesting we use a wine bottle. Brilliant! Next: oven won’t turn on? No pr… WHAT?!! Oven won’t turn on? Aaaack! This hurdle resulted in a tearful phone call to Glenn (“How can we have Christmas with no Christmas baking, no yeast rolls, no dinner!”). I considered figuring out how to use the wood-burning oven, but that would have made the house unbearably hot. Thank goodness Janine Bacon, physician liaison at the hospital, was able to tell me that I needed to reset the timer. Huh? Yes, it’s a safety feature on the ovens here: if the power goes out (or your nine-year-old jiggles the dials), you have to reset the clock/timer before the oven will go on.
So now the oven was on and ingredients were on the counter, and it was time to start putting things together. Recipe calls for ½ cup of butter; I had a kilogram of butter, marked in 50 gram segments. Ask.com told me that the metric equivalent is about 110 grams, so I cleared that hurdle. Bake at 350 degrees F? OK, so the iPod conversion app tells me that’s about 175 degrees C. Thank goodness for technology. And fortunately, we don’t have to make adjustments for high altitude cooking, too, or I might have thrown my hands up and said, “We’re going out to dinner.”
In the end, the girls and I made gingerbread men and kiwis, icebox cookies, cocoa snaps, and pretzels (Katy’s idea—and pretty good, too). We put together a plate of goodies to take to the hospital in Lower Hutt, and the nurses there were so appreciative and gracious. We’ll make up a couple more trays to give away and deliver on Christmas Eve. We’ll have egg casserole, fruit, and cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast, and Christmas dinner will be asparagus, yeast rolls, new potatoes with caper sauce, marinated sun-dried tomato salad, and an onion and mushroom tart tartin. I’m excitedly looking forward to the holiday—even if it is going to be 26 degrees on Christmas Day (80 Fahrenheit).
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