Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Bringing my kitchen to Mexico


After my third attempt of making oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon, I had success. Finding the ingredients was the first challenge. Soy milk is not sold in most grocery stores and maple syrup is only found in an organic foods store, Green Corner, where it runs at 20 USD a bottle for 16 oz. Baking soda does not exist: only baking powder. Then comes the whole wheat pastry flour. Forget it. On accident, I bought whole wheat flour (which I used for the first two tries) and since it was not pastry flour, the cookies turned out like hard balls of oatmeal, cinnamon and chocolate. Finally I switched to white all-purpose flour, and the cookies turned out just about right. We will not get into baking at high altitudes with ovens that do not have temperatures written on the knobs.


My other success story took place on Sunday, when I offered to make dinner. Pasta was my challenge. I went to Dreena's blog, http://vivelevegan.blogspot.com/, and found a sun-dried tomato pesto. Dreena never lets me down, as the pasta was scrumptious. On Monday night, I recycled the pesto and made open faced baguettes with spinach, garlic and basil.


Tomorrow night we are having a Fulbright dinner at Nina's apartment and I will be cooking Mexican pumpkin soup and roasted tomato bruschetta.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain when it comes to cooking and ingredient-finding in Mexico. Just wanted to share something though -- baking soda is known here as "bicarbonato" (bicarbonate -- cause that's all it is). You can usually get it in a packet near the spices. Hope that helps with your cooking!

--Katie (in Xalapa)

k said...

mmm that was good soup