Rain, ping pong battles and cookies.

At the beginning of this week, I decided I was going to make cookies for my host family here. They've been an ideal family to live with and I want to try to show them how much I appreciate them in as many ways as possible. Little did I know how large that task was going to be.

Always before cooking, I try to take inventory. Nothing is worse than summoning the effort to start cooking and having to stop because you lack one, integral ingredient. I know because it's happened to me before. A lot.

Anyway, while searching the house for cooking paraphernalia, I noticed that they had almost everything except baking powder and corn syrup. My gut reaction, being an American, was that corn syrup is readily available and I should have no problem finding it at the local supermarket. I was so wrong.

I biked to the market (very short trip; about two minutes), and went over to the cashier. Immediately in my head, I thought of what I was going to ask. I approached him and asked where the corn syrup was, but only got a bewildered stare in return. I realized just seconds later that I accidentally spoke in English. With a "não foi importânte", I started my search.

I found the baking power pretty easily, but the corn syrup was impossible. After a good fifteen minutes panning the aisles, I saw that there were at least ten different types of oils, but no corn syrup. I sighed in defeat, returning home without that one vital ingredient.

As I opened the gate home, I remembered something Chef Grace taught me in Culinary I: some of the greatest things you'll ever make are made by diverging from the recipe. That in mind, I looked again through my ingredients for a good, yet interesting corn syrup substitute. In a matter of minutes, I found a large tub of fresh honey. About the same thickness, slightly sweeter, but because honey is so fresh in Brasil, I felt confident about using it.

Just as I was about to start, I noticed that three extremely important things were missing: one, there were NO measuring cups/spoons in the house. None. Two, the oven had no place to put the temperature. The settings were low, medium and high. And three, there were no cookie sheets. After my breakthrough with the honey though and the arduous voyage to the grocery store, I was not about to give up easily.

Something I admire about Brasilians is their ability to adapt in new situations. So today I tried to cook the Brasilian way. I watched every second as my cookies rose on low heat, on a freshly washed pizza pan.

Despite the difficulty, or maybe because of it, the cookies tasted awesome. Though I don't think I'm going to make them again for a while.