All burnt things taste the same!

Living in Semonkong makes you want to try new things, if anything then to just take up time. I hear this is especially true of winter time when it gets dark at around 5 and you want to go to bed around 7. I don't want to think about that right now! Even if winter wasn't the case it's fun just to play around with some cooking, it takes up time and doing dishes might be your biggest accomplishment all day...all week if it's typical Peace Corps!

The other day I made particular note when I baked up some peanut butter cookies mom sent me from home. Betty Crocker or someone like that; thanks mom! This is called roughin' it for real! I use a dutch oven on my stove top. It's used a lot for camp cooking and it works really well if not faster than a conventional oven. The only thing is I can't really measure how long things will take to cook. Everything is according to someone else, somewhere else, with something much nicer than my big pot!

The first batch didn't turn out too well. The cookies laid out into a big mass in the enamel plate I placed half the batter. After about 15 minutes though I started to doubt how good they would turn out. I tested the center and wasn't convinced that it was cooked all the way. This is a reaction to my new found disdain for eggs which I may vent about later.

I left the blob of a cookie in the pot for another 5 minutes and as soon as I took it out I knew it was fried on the bottom.

This isn't the first batch of anything that I've burn but no matter what it is there is the same taste. The smell might change from an acrid almost caustic fume to something more noticeably like fire. Fettuccine paste, orange bread, peanut butter cookies, it all tastes like burnt –a new flavor that hopefully Baskin' Robins doesn't start making.

The second batch was much better but no worries mom, nothing went to waste. I am too much like dad and scrapped off all the burnt!!