CHINESE CHICKLET CHOP COOKIES

We baked cookies!!!!! This is a story. This is going to be broken into two parts, the buying stuff and the baking stuff parts.

BUYING:

By "we", I mean myself along with six other NSLI-Y kids. On Saturday, several of us (Vanessa, Elliot, Margaret, and Ida) met up outside the school and then took the bus to buy things like vanilla extract from the western grocery where I bought my bread-making things (speaking of which, I need to make more bread). 

But this is easier said then done. We got horrendously lost, and ended up hanging out by The Pants. We called another student (David) who lives by The Pants, and he and his host brother came and helped us out. We wandered around the SIP [Suzhou Industrial Park] for a little bit, before stumbling on the grocery.

I thought we were miles away from where we were. I was actually trying to get to an entirely different (and not as good) market because I had given up all hope of finding the grocery and the other market seemed closer. I practically had a spiritual moment when I decided to go another block down to see if any of the stores sold something cold to drink, and found THE store. 

Seriously, this store might as well have been the holy grail. I had literally given up.

Anyways, we bought stuff (BASIL!!!!! I HAVE BEEN TO SO MANY CHINESE GROCERY STORES, SO MANY SPICE STORES, SO MANY DIFFERENT PLACES, AND ONLY TWO PEOPLE HAD EVEN HEARD OF BASIL. I WAS CONVINCED THAT BASIL DOES NOT EXIST IN CHINA. BUT IT DOES!!!!!! :) :) :) ), and made our way back to my house. Amy joined up with us, making seven. 

BAKING:

One important thing to know about Ida is that when it comes to cooking, she is in charge. I am pretty much convinced that if you left her alone in a classroom for a few hours, she'd find a way to bake the desks in to an edible, scale model of the Great Wall or something. 

There was plenty of unit conversions and guesstimating (ha! Gmail agrees with me, "guesstimating" is a real word!), but it was all fun. We made the first batch using Hershey's chocolate chips (THAT I COULD EAT. I CHECKED IT ABOUT SEVEN TIMES, AND ALL SEVEN TIMES THE LABEL SAID IT WAS OKAY:) :) It was really tasty too, I've been missing chocolate) on an improvised cookie sheet.  

I took one of the many aluminum bread pans (they only sold them in packs of six, and I only need one), and cut lengthwise down the corners. Then I flattened out the sides. It was basically the same as a cookie sheet without corners. 

Then David, Ida, and Elliot had to go, so four of us made the second batch using the Skippers I'd brought from the States [nut-free M&Ms].

 It was wonderful to get a long, interrupted chance to talk to these people, about all kinds of things. I really do hope I'll do a better job of staying in contact with these people than I did last year when this all is over (SCARY THOUGHT, I AM AVOIDING IT)

My host grandmother tastes her first chocolate chip cookie!