"Listen to my story."
This is it. This is my Brownie story. It all begins here. '____'
In about half an hour's time, I'll be setting up to bake brownies for tonight's potluck. God, I hope I don't blow the kitchen up.
We were called for a cluster meeting last Sunday NIGHT. Our cluster leader was required to report our level's planned dish the very next day, and had been pinning all her hopes on this one Vietnamese girl who cooks regularly. As luck would have it, said Vietnamese girl won't be around to cook (I was iffy from the start whether she'd help out, since she didn't take part in the potluck last semester too, on account of attending a big Vietnamese gathering in honour of a special occasion. Which was her excuse again this time. Really, is the hostel management so bad that they plan potlucks twice on big Vietnamese occasions? Twice! Forgive me for being a tad doubtful.) and our leader panics. It's crunch time, she has no chef, and the rest of us who attended the meeting couldn't cook for crap.
So it baffled me when I suggested just baking-- using baking mix, we're no Martha Stewarts here-- brownies, Leader said something to the effect of, "But it's not exotic enough!"
Er, yeah, but you don't have much of a choice, do you? Beggars not choosers and all that. Talk about being picky. :X I told her that brownies were safe, easy, and always readily welcomed by anyone. We wouldn't win the prize for originality, but did we really care? So we agreed on brownies, and all of us in that quiet, unanimous sort of way, picked Leader as the person who would buy the ingredients.
...You know how you just assume some things are universal? Like how everyone is supposed to know what "RAM" is? So I just assumed she'd buy the correct brownie mix, although I did remind her about the eggs, which came separately. And we specifically told her to look for a baking aisle.
Thursday evening, Leader shows me her haul: one bag of self-raising flour (which you don't need when you use brownie mix), a packet of raisins, a packet of chocolate, vanilla extract and pandan extract (!). No brownie mix, no eggs. I probably would've been annoyed, because it meant I'd have to haul my ass out and do the shopping myself, but it was too hilarious. Tried not to laugh (really! ... well, a snerk did slip through...). If I've never done baking before, I probably would've made the same mistake... maybe not buy PANDAN, though... But... yeah. ^^;
I headed to IMM yesterday to do the shopping, effectively proving wrong my belief that I'd never find any reason to step into a hypermarket. It was also the first time in my whole LIFE I've ever gone grocery shopping on my own. I'm surprised I knew where the baskets were. XD
I specifically showed her the boxes of brownie mix when I got back. I think she got a little embarrassed because her immediate response was that she was new to the (instant-)baking business, and couldn't have been expected to know. Hee, you just gotta smile when people get so defensive. :3
In about half an hour's time, I'll be setting up to bake brownies for tonight's potluck. God, I hope I don't blow the kitchen up.
We were called for a cluster meeting last Sunday NIGHT. Our cluster leader was required to report our level's planned dish the very next day, and had been pinning all her hopes on this one Vietnamese girl who cooks regularly. As luck would have it, said Vietnamese girl won't be around to cook (I was iffy from the start whether she'd help out, since she didn't take part in the potluck last semester too, on account of attending a big Vietnamese gathering in honour of a special occasion. Which was her excuse again this time. Really, is the hostel management so bad that they plan potlucks twice on big Vietnamese occasions? Twice! Forgive me for being a tad doubtful.) and our leader panics. It's crunch time, she has no chef, and the rest of us who attended the meeting couldn't cook for crap.
So it baffled me when I suggested just baking-- using baking mix, we're no Martha Stewarts here-- brownies, Leader said something to the effect of, "But it's not exotic enough!"
Er, yeah, but you don't have much of a choice, do you? Beggars not choosers and all that. Talk about being picky. :X I told her that brownies were safe, easy, and always readily welcomed by anyone. We wouldn't win the prize for originality, but did we really care? So we agreed on brownies, and all of us in that quiet, unanimous sort of way, picked Leader as the person who would buy the ingredients.
...You know how you just assume some things are universal? Like how everyone is supposed to know what "RAM" is? So I just assumed she'd buy the correct brownie mix, although I did remind her about the eggs, which came separately. And we specifically told her to look for a baking aisle.
Thursday evening, Leader shows me her haul: one bag of self-raising flour (which you don't need when you use brownie mix), a packet of raisins, a packet of chocolate, vanilla extract and pandan extract (!). No brownie mix, no eggs. I probably would've been annoyed, because it meant I'd have to haul my ass out and do the shopping myself, but it was too hilarious. Tried not to laugh (really! ... well, a snerk did slip through...). If I've never done baking before, I probably would've made the same mistake... maybe not buy PANDAN, though... But... yeah. ^^;
I headed to IMM yesterday to do the shopping, effectively proving wrong my belief that I'd never find any reason to step into a hypermarket. It was also the first time in my whole LIFE I've ever gone grocery shopping on my own. I'm surprised I knew where the baskets were. XD
I specifically showed her the boxes of brownie mix when I got back. I think she got a little embarrassed because her immediate response was that she was new to the (instant-)baking business, and couldn't have been expected to know. Hee, you just gotta smile when people get so defensive. :3