Apparently I over estimated my momentum, along with the cookie passion of the Czech Republic. I guess I hadn’t noticed that cookies weren’t a common item in shops or bakeries - somehow my cookie radar missed this? Or perhaps it just broke instantly upon landing in this cookie barren desert…. Anyways it took me about an hour of searching futilely through the congested aisles of Tesco (Czech‘s most American grocery store) for vanilla extract, brown sugar, chocolate chips and baking soda for me to comes to terms with the fact that maybe home baked cookies just aren’t a big thing here. Disappointed, but not discouraged I improvised my recipe with vanilla sugar, loose brown sugar, crushed chocolate bars and baking powder. And with a sigh of relief I left Tesco. But as if that fiasco just wasn’t quite enough to really challenge me, I discovered on my return to the institute that our kitchen contained absolutely no measuring devices. Ugh.
This may have deterred a lesser cookie fanatic , but fortunately for me the world holds no stronger motivation for me than a batch of fresh baked cookies and a t-shirt decorated with ingredients. I scrounged up a small teaspoon and a coffee mug roughly the size of a 1 cup measurement and continued my war with fate. The dough came out a little bit more liquidy that usual but tasted up to par, so into the tiny oven it went. And sure enough after 8-10 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius I had 12 lovely little brown lumps of sweet melty chocolatey goodness. Ahhhh sweeet victory. My studio friends agreed.
In other news our group had a bowling trip on Monday. It was fun, but it was also bowling… so not exhilerating. I had bees and beekeeping for the first time on Tuesday. Our professor doesn’t speak English super well but he knows a lot so it was informative. For the second half of class we mostly just watched a discovery channel/pbs video on the entire sociology of honey bees. Frankly, one of the most fascinating and interesting videos I’ve ever seen while also one of the most repulsive. Those cameras get sickeningly close to the action. And I will think twice before I doodle a cute friendly bumble bee on my math homework again.
On Tuesday night we all went to a jazz club which was a cool hole in the ground type of place. The music was re
ally awesome ….and so were the drinks. Anna and I shared a bottle of wine which was nice, until the grad students all decided to take shots of absinthe with Art. (Art by the way is the 50ish year old dean of the landscape architecture program. Who was with us, and consistently drinking with us- the absinthe was his suggestion- for 2 weeks but flying home to Raleigh the next morning at some ungodly hour. We haven’t heard anything bad so we assume he made it home okay) anyways I wasn’t suicidal enough to try absinthe, but witnessing the whole thing inspired everybody to take a shot of something. My poison was absolut pears -which like the rest of ‘em- sounds and smells wayyyy better than it tastes. Wednesday morning was a groggy one for all of us.Wednesday was usual classes and a few of us made pizza for dinner. Later we had a mini movie night and watched monsters inc on my laptop in the hostel. I passed out about half way through. Ah sweet sleeep. Today is normal classes again, we made valentine dresses for our little dress forms in studio. There are plans for sushi tonight (should be interesting at least) and skiing tomorrow.
Lauren
I miss your cookies!!
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