Battle of the Cream Cheese, Partie Deux

Take that France. IN YOUR FACE.

So continuing our story of the lost days when I didn't have internet....

Friday, as you can tell, was quite a full day. We didn't get home until well after midnight. Saturday, however, was another story. Everybody either had to go to work or run errands except me, so I was left home alone. It was pretty boring, especially without internet. I read a book that Yadira lent to me called "The Princess Within" for a while, but my attention span wasn't cooperating. Eventually Silvia came home and we both took naps.... that took up the majority of my day. BORING.

But when I woke up, Silvia explained to me that they were having a bake sale for the VBS (or EBE as it's called here) at church the next day, and she said that a co-worker of hers had given her a recipe in english for carrot cake and she wanted to know if I could make it. I agreed and got my hopes up of actually doing something productive, but she couldn't find the recipe. Womp womp. But when I first got here, Yadira showed me where she had a bunch of french recipe books, so I decided I would try my hand at making something and following french directions. But when I opened the first book, voila! There was the english recipe for carrot cake. I wasn't sure how it would go because I'm not used to using the metric system, we didn't have orange juice (although it was only 2 tbsp) and we didn't have enough brown sugar (so Silvia told me to just add white sugar, but it's not the same....) and we didn't have self-rising flour, only wheat flour, or baking soda (Silvia told me to use bread yeast instead...) so I was quite nervous about how it would turn out. I grated all the carrots by hand and mixed everything and put it in the toaster oven. It LOOKED okay, but that doesn't always mean anything. I was worried it would cook unevenly or rise weird because of the yeast, or taste off because of the changed ingredients. While it was baking, I decided I would try to make the accompanying recipe for cream cheese icing. The recipe said to use Kiri, which I've seen in stores here but we didn't have any. We had something close to it, though, so I decided to use that.

Well I have to say, the cake AND the icing came out GREAT! The cake was just the perfect consistency and the icing added the perfect taste. Finally, I baked/cooked something right! We brought that (and the remaining strawberry pretzel salad) to church for the bake sale on Sunday and sold slices for 1 euro. Surprisingly, they BOTH were a huge hit. People kept coming up to me and telling me how much they loved the cakes. One man even insisted on paying 5 euros for one slice because he said it was worth that much! And they're having bakesales for the next two Sundays and asked me if I could keep baking for it. Woot woot it's not a lost cause after all!

Take that France. And that victory is worth 20 points because the people liked both the cakes I made and, well, because I said so. France 1, Gina 20. Maybe this baking thing will turn out alright after all.

Saturday night we also had our second "réunion familial" where I was supposed to tell everyone about my "projects". I was nervous because honestly, I didn't really know what to say. I'm auditioning for Disney and if that doesn't work I'll look for something else. I can't do anything else legally until I get a job, so what is there to say? And when Gilles started asking me questions, I started to get nervous but Yadira came to my rescue and stated, "What projects? She's going to audition for Disney and then take it from there," but I think Gilles was looking for a more long term answer (which I didn't have). Luckily, JC jumped in and kind of set an example for me of what his short and long term goals were physically, socially, financially, spiritually, etc... and then we all followed suite and everyone shared about their long and short terms dreams about the future. It was really cool because even though they're a family, everyone learned new things about everyone else. I also opened up and shared about me being nervous about living with other people and not being so independent anymore, but again, it ended up being a really good thing because this family is just so gentle and kind, and knew the exact words to say to put me at ease. I was so worried about hurting their feelings by telling them how I honestly felt, but they weren't hurt at all and it's good that they know now so we better know how to work things out. All in all, I really got stressed out over this meeting for nothing; it ended up being really informal, I spoke french just fine, and actually learned a lot of things. It was actually really cool to just sit and talk about life, especially with a family!

Sunday after church, we went cherry picking in our friend Clément's backyard. It was so much fun (although really cold but Clément lent me a sweatshirt). The cherries were more yellow than red, but they said they were okay to pick. It was funny because you could tell that the red parts were exactly where the sun hit the cherry as it was growing. We spent a couple hours picking cherries and I'm telling you, we must have close to 50 lbs of cherries. We had to take 3 separate bags because we couldn't all carry them in one! Clément's mother also made us dinner, which was so nice of her. And I got to read a comic book of the Smurfs (or, Schrumphfs, as they're called here) which was pretty cool too. So now we've got lots and lots and lots of cherries in the house. JC is making cherry jam but there's still a lot left over. I guess I know what I'll be baking next. Why don't YOU come over and try some??? ;-)