Cooking

Oh, the life of a single guy…in West Africa!

So we have this cookbook for Niger, which was made by the Peace Corps. It’s actually really great and I’ve decided that I want to start cooking more. So we decided not to hire a lady to cook for us (trust me, it would be completely culturally appropriate to do so). I figure I can really learn how to cook for myself more, and especially using recipes from scratch (you know, character-building, “I’m a real man” type of cooking for a change). By the way, “scratch” means no boxes or microwaves, simply starting with the basic ingredients.

I decided to make “no-bake cookies.” Easy, right? My mom used to make really good ones when I was growing up, so I thought I’d “give it a burl” (that’s Aussie lingo I’ve picked up from the other missionaries). Simple, throw some stuff together, heat it up, let it set, and voila…delicious cookies for the entire week!

I doubled the recipe and unknowingly “octupled” the milk portion of the recipe. So instead of putting ½ cup of milk, I put 2 cups! Yeah, 4 times the correct amount. Not so good.

Needless to say, the cookies didn’t set. Should’ve called them “Chocolate Oatmeal how-can-you-blow-it-on-a-recipe-that-has-‘no bake’-in-the-title Cookies”!

End of story. It wasn’t a complete waste because we still enjoyed the clumps of batter for the next week or so…

PS – Crazy thing I learned in Hausa class…the Hausa word for cannibal. You won’t believe it. The word is “yumyum”…like my cookies!