Our cooking fiasco...

Saturday turned out to be quite a day. We had planned on going to a BBQ later in the day and they had asked if we would bring dessert with us. We decided that we would make Apple Crisp to bring with us... being that apple orchards are all over the place here, and they're in season! So, I called home and was able to get my Grandma's infamous Apple Crisp recipe... thank you Grandma! :) Brian and I then went to the grocery store to purchase all of the ingredients. Well, we didn't think about the fact that all of the names of the ingredients aren't in English... lovely! So, we had to go through the store and try to figure out how to find sugar, flour, cinnamon, etc.... in German. We ended up learning that sugar is "zucker", flour is "Weizen Mehl", oatmeal is "Hafenflocken", cinnamon is "Zimt", and brown sugar is "braun zucker". We quickly found out that the pictures on packages are definitely helpful! :)

After our shopping trip, we hurried home to get started with the baking. That's where we ran into our next problem... My recipe was written our in English measurements (cups, tablespoons, teaspoons...), but we don't have any of those measuring units because they're all still on the boat getting shipped over here... ugh!! All we had was the measuring container that was left in the apartment... and that was all in "Grams". So, Brian set out to figure out how to convert our units of measurement into theirs. (And we all know that Math isn't my favorite subject, so I left this task to him while I peeled apples! :)).

After we figured out the conversions, we figured that it would all be downhill from there... So, we mixed everything together and put it in the oven and waited for it to finish. After about 30 minutes, I decided to check on it to see how it was doing... Not so good! You know how the "crisp" part is supposed to gel together to form sort of a coating over the apples? Ours wasn't gelling together at all... all we had was oatmeal on top of apples. The two of us put our heads together and decided that if we scraped the oatmeal off of the top and put it back into a bowl, we could just add more butter and brown sugar and then maybe that would help to make it stick together... So, we did just that. :) That's when we discovered that their brown sugar is different from the brown sugar you find in the U.S. Our brown sugar is really fine and when added to butter, it turns sort of syrupy... This brown sugar is just like regular granulated sugar, only brown... So, let's just say, that this sugar (no matter how much we added, and we added ALOT!) would not dissolve into a syrupy form. We finally gave up, and just mixed the new butter/sugar mixture into the oatmeal we had scraped off the top of the apple crisp. We then put the new mixture over the apples and put it back in the oven, all the while hoping that it would miraculously turn out! :) Well, after another 20 minutes in the oven, I took the apple crisp out to see if our new mixture had worked, and quickly realized that it hadn't... :( So, we basically called it a loss, and took our version of Apple Crisp (which we renamed Apples and Oatmeal) to the BBQ. Amazingly enough, everyone there seemed to really enjoy it... They all went back for seconds and commented on how good it was... very odd, but we were just happy they liked it. We ended up finding out later in the evening that Apple Crisp is not something they have over here (it's more of an American dessert), so they really didn't have anything to compare it to! :)

Well, I'd better get going. Brian's home from work, so it's time to make dinner and then head to the gym. Oh, and in case you haven't heard, I had quite an exciting day on Friday... I booked airline tickets for Brian and I to go to London over my birthday weekend! Yay!!! I can't wait! :) I hope you all have a great Monday! Miss you much!