Monthly Archives: May 2012

It’s a pie! It’s a loaf! It’s…I have no idea…

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If you can take a wild guess what this dish is I’ll give you a million dollars. If you can even tell me whether it’s a meat, vegetarian, or a fruit dish, whether it’s pie, bread, or some kind of meatloaf I’ll give you $10. But you need to come to England to collect it.

I know I’ve kept you in suspense long enough. This dish, according to the recipe I followed, is a rhubarb bread and butter pudding. M’s grandma gave me a huge bunch of rhubarb the last time we went for a visit and with only 2 days left to go before leaving the country for 2 weeks I knew I needed to do something with them FAST. She had recommended boiling them in sugar and just eating them like that but I wanted to get a little creative so I looked up a recipe. While I didn’t have the EXACT ingredients they called for I figured tiny adjustments and substitutions would be alright.

Except that it didn’t turn out to be alright…

Here is the original recipe:

This is how I strayed…

I started baking at 1AM because I wanted to bring in something nice to work and I knew we wouldn’t be able to finish off a whole loaf on our own.

I checked on my loaf 45 minutes after I’d put it in the oven, as the recipe called for. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was still a liquid mess. “That’s alright, just let it bake a little longer…at some point it will solidify” was my thinking. I think I left the loaf in the oven for double the amount of time as requested but when it came out, it came out looking BEAUTIFUL. Really! Fluffy, golden, and it smelled pretty decent as well. Even M wanted a bite of it. So at 3AM I went to bed feeling pretty satisfied and happy about the fact that I’d have something good to bring into work the next morning.

So just imagine the look of disappointment on my face when I saw that my lovely masterpiece had completely deflated overnight. When I went to pack up my dish to bring to work I found my loaf had completely fallen in and what had appeared to be golden the night before now just looked burnt.

To avoid any embarrassment I decided not to bring anything in to work. To punish myself I had the whole loaf for dinner, dessert that night and breakfast and dinner the next day. M played no part in helping me finish the loaf I refused to throw away…jerk.

Oh mio Dio…

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So in my last post I stated how important it is to stay on The Nonna’s good side. So I’m sure you can appreciate the irony I’m now about to tell you…

I think my snail collection brought me up a few points but as of yesterday I believe I did something that will keep me in the negatives for many many many years to come. Possibly an eternity…

The whole family was out yesterday but I stayed back to do some work and to also keep The Nonna company. I took a wee little break from doing work and started “chatting” to The Nonna…i.e. sputtered out some words that seemed coherent at times, but also involved a lot of hand movements to demonstrate what I was trying to say. I’ll be totally honest here, I did go to my computer to have Google Translate come to my aid as well.

Everything was going fine and dandy for a while…I told her how my sisters are doing, she asked about my parents, she told me about life in Rome and everything was all great and pleasant. Then somehow the topic of religion came up. Next thing I knew I was asked what religion I was…

*oh shit* is what went through my mind. “Non sono religioso…” was my answer. I thought it’d be better to be honest (when I told M later he told me I should have lied and that I’m basically done for). The shock (disgust?? horror??) on her face was almost more than I could take. She asked if I was baptized…I told her no. Oh if looks could kill…

The Nonna- “Catholic? Christian? Anglican? But don’t you believe in God? That there’s something above?”

Me- “Um…I’m not sure…I don’t know!”

Then I may have gone into panic mode…”my parents aren’t religious! I didn’t grow up going to church!” How I managed to say all this I have no idea. Maybe there is something divine out there. I would’ve started believing right then and there if there had been some kind of divine intervention to help with my struggle.

I can’t recall exactly how I managed to wriggle my way out of the situation..it’s all become a vague and hazy memory. I think I mumbled something about needing to prepare dinner and scurried away.

The Nonna came by today and I had actually forgotten about the whole situation. But I knew immediately the conversation was still fresh in her mind when after M and I dropped her back off at her apartment M told me his nonna had said “tell Hazel to brush her hair”. She would’ve never said anything like that two days ago. I think my angelic image has been forever tarnished.

So I beg of you, please give me some advice. What is a girl in my situation to do? Convert? Pretend to convert? Or just accept the fact that I’m no longer the portrait of perfection I’d so gotten used to being?

Help…