requiem for a pumpkin

i’m tired.

last week we were invited to have dinner with a few families in the ward, at the home of a delightful couple whose son is on a mission in canada. we were instructed to bring some sort of gift with us. we really weren’t sure what that meant... one gift? a gift for everyone that was going to be there? and we didn’t exactly know how many people were going to be there... which made things difficult.

we decided that the best thing to do would be to bring a treat for everyone to share.

and who doesn’t like cookies, right?

silly us, we thought the best thing to do would be to make pumpkin cookies. i think it’s just because we saw it on a list of recipes, and that’s what sounded the best at the time.

after looking over several sites, we settled on a recipe that seemed it would yield what we wanted.

introduce problem number one: US/metric conversion.

the site was kind enough to solve this problem for us... sort of. it gave the metric equivalents... but we a) forgot to copy down the american units to compare with (because when it tells you that you need 9 grams of something... it’s really a lot easier if you know that it’s asking for a tablespoon... or i assume that’s what it was), b) didn’t have any way of weighing, for example, our 490 grams of pumpkin purée and c) and didn’t consider the fact that you can’t buy canned pumpkin in france (although getting an actual pumpkin isn’t so hard... but you have to cook the devil out of the thing to remove enough water to get a decent consistency).

uhhh... i guess i also introduced the other problems there too... dang it.

yeah, needless to say, it took a heck of a lot longer to get our cookies made that i had anticipated... and they still needed to be baked! (mind you, we started making them around 8 or so saturday night...)

oooo... i just remembered another problem. we don’t have ground cinnamon. we have cinnamon sticks. that was fun. i spent hours last night destroying our little kitchen knife to get cinnamon scrapings... great times!

so... the last problem (i just keep remembering them... but i’m feeling too lazy to go back and finish the layout scheme that i started... sorry... you’ll understand shortly): our oven is miniscule. we could only bake 5 cookies at a time, for 13 minutes and another 2 for cooling.

aside from that... our downstairs neighbor is gifted with the auditive powers of a dog, and is under the impression that we walk like a heard of elephants doing the salsa. so, i had to move really slowly... due largely to the fact that you can’t look at our floor without it creaking. (i swear... one of these days his entire ceiling is going to fall in, and i’m gonna be staring through the floor at a consternated, dust-covered old man with a broom in his hands and a confused look on his face.)

to shorten the present story... i didn’t get into my bed until 3:30 this morning. and i didn’t even finish baking all the cookies! i got 43 (there was a little bit of a learning curve with this recipe... and thus a few “casualties”...) done, and have enough dough left for at least 20 more.

i’m tired.