Howdy Neighbor!

Welcome Basket of Bananas

 

 

 

 

So a few weeks ago I decided it was time to introduce ourselves to the neighbors and try to make friends with those Kingdom of Lesotho people on one side of us and the Chinese family on the other. After all, we're new to the neighborhood, we're amongst the few "westerners" on the block, and we have a dog (a very big no-no in most places around here). I figured I had to do something "sweet" to get on their good side and did what any typical housewife would do....I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, trying my best to convert tablespoons of butter and cups of sugar into the right amount of grams and praying that I would make the correct Fahrenheit to Celsius temperature conversions to keep from burning (yet another) tasty treat in our temperamental oven. Sidenote: I had just learned the hard way a couple of baking attempts prior to this one that the button I originally thought was the convection oven feature was in fact the self-cleaner button after I  ended up burning everything to a crisp. The crust on that poor little shriveled up key-lime pie seriously could have chipped a tooth. Live and learn, bake and burn, right?!? Anyway, I decided to put my best little Betty Crocker face back on and give it another go. I calculated, converted, and carefully mixed that chocolatey chunk of cookie dough and made sure everything was just perfect.....until it was time to actually put them in the oven. Um, so apparently we really do make things a little bigger back in Texas because the cookie sheets we brought with us are way too big to fit in our miniature Malaysian oven. Thank goodness for the sweet little grocery store on the end of our block that's bailed me out of many a last-minute cooking crisis, so off to Ampang Grocers I went for a pair of pint-sized cookie sheets that fit ever so perfectly in our pint-sized oven. 12 minutes at approximately 190 degrees Celsius later, I had my first successful batch of, well, almost anything here. :) Ahhhh, success is sweet! I baked up a few dozen cookies to split between our neighbors and took them each a little taste of what we consider to be the ultimate comfort food/welcome gift/let's-be-friends kind of gesture. I mean, a chocolate chip cookie is so much more than just a cookie. It's all of your happy, wonderful, perfect childhood memories and sweet thoughts of mom and after school treats and everything joyful all baked into a slightly crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside crumbly looking disc. Of course, these weren't even close, nor will they ever even come close to being as good as mom's! The good news though, is that neither one of our neighbors have ever experienced one of mom's chocolate chip cookies (and odds are didn't even know what one was prior to this), so as far as they know, I could have very well invented these things! I think they must have liked them because a couple of days later our sweet Chinese family neighbors brought over a big bundle of bananas....of local bananas, which are smaller and slightly sweeter than ones back home. Bananas, I have come to find out, are actually native to Southeast Asia (thank you, Wikipedia). Yep, Will and I really enjoyed those baby bananas (all 30 of them) and the fun little exchange we had with our new friends. I think I like this tradition. Next time someone new moves into the neighborhood I might just have to toss those cookie sheets out the window and pick up a bundle of local bananas instead!