Cooking Adventures

A few weeks ago I decided to buy an oven for my family because I love to bake so much.

When I arrived home with the oversized toaster oven in my hands, my mom and little sister were a bit surprised.  The Vietnamese don't bake anything; most families don't even have an oven in their house.  Bread wasn't even introduced to Vietnam until the French conquered.  So when I walked in carrying the oversized toaster oven, they were pretty shocked. They had never baked anything in an oven before.

That first night, I decided to make my absolute favorite desert of all time: chocolate chip cookies.  They turned out surprisingly delicious, I thought, despite having to improvise with my ingredients.  I didn't have vanilla, baking soda, or chocolate chips.  I used M&Ms instead of chocolate chips, and I also had to use strange Swedish butter and duck eggs. My mom and sister seemed very confused by the cookies.  They thought they were really fun to make, but they didn't really know what to do with them.  My sister didn't even eat them because she doesn't like chocolate.  And my mom told me I should use much less sugar next time; they were way too sweet. I have to say.. I really miss eating chocolate chip cookies.

This past weekend, on Friday, I decided to bake cookies again. I got all the ingredients ready, and starting mixing everything up.  After baking one tray of cookies, my mom decided to add her own Vietnamese twist to the cookies: a nice, ripe mango.  We both laughed as she scraped the banana into the batter and mixed it up.   (I should say, just by the way, that we did not add the M&Ms to the batter because my mom and sister don't like chocolate. Instead I just added a few pieces into the cookies that I wanted to eat.)

So.. the cookies didn't actually turn out that bad as I though they would. They were a little bit strange; I don't think I'll ever do it again.  But it did give both both my mom and me a good laugh.

On Sunday, I decided to bake once again.  My mom had asked me to teach her how to bake cake, so I decided we should make basic vanilla cupcakes.  I left out a ton of the sugar so that it wasn't as sweet.  I have come to realize that it's not just my mom and sister that don't like sugar; the Vietnamese people in general really don't eat that many sweets or deserts. My family liked these vanilla cupcakes much more than the cookies.  My mom said that we should make them much more often and eat them for breakfast.  I agreed; they really just tasted like some sweet bread, and would go great with some tea or coffee.

I also decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies after I finished the cupcakes to bring to my classmates the next day at school.  I was really happy with how they turned out.  I think I have finally perfected the art of baking chocolate chip cookies with Vietnamese ingredients.

While I was baking the cookies, my great aunt was hanging around our apartment.  My mom offered her a cookie to try, and she took one bite and ran to the bathroom and started gagging.  I am being absolutely serious.  My absolutely wonderful, delicious, warm, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies made my great aunt want to puke! I was so offended.




Just kidding. It made me laugh pretty hard.  In that moment, I realized something.  Just like some of the Vietnamese food makes me want to barf (chicken feet, anyone?), some American food makes the Vietnamese want to barf too.  We have so much in common in our differences.