October 29. 2004 23:38

Festival preparations

I totally forgot it's the end of the month already and there's Halloween and the Kinosei festival at school! Kinosei is kinda like the cultural festivals you see in anime and I was supposed to take part in it somehow, but I totally forgot to ask what I could take part in. But today I had the perfect idea! I'll make some Finnish peppercakes, christmas cookies! I can take a bag of them and Finnish candies and give them out.

Frigga and the guys were kind enough to write the recipe for peppercakes in the little book they put in my "survival pack", but the problem is that there are no ovens in this country. I tried to ask Ken-san if he knew any I could use, but he didn't know either. But talking to him and trying to figure out what to do I decided to try if I could use the toaster as an oven. It's basically like a miniature oven and it has functions for pizza and stuff like that (though I think it's just warming up), so it might work. It's just a little adventure, then ^_^;

Finding the ingredients wasn't an easy task, either. I went to Maruzen to get them, but that was a small mistake, because A-Coop has a far better selection of stuff than Maruzen. I managed to find everything but the spices, though, even if some of the stuff I took was a little adventurous... The real cream was f***ing expensive, so I took this "pure vegetable whip", which is supposed to be vegetable fat based cream. (I think.) I hope it'll work. The syrup I'm using isn't just normal syrup, it's honey syrup, but that's okay, it just gives the cookies an extra honey flavour.

Then, instead of baking soda I have to use this "baking powder". I know what you're thinking, baking powder isn't exaclty the same as soda. I don't really know what's in it, it tasted like soda to me. I hope it's okay... And I couldn't find powdered ginger anywhere so I'll have to leave that out (I wasn't brave enough to try the paste) and there were only whole cloves, so I'll have to powder them myself.

Oops! I just remembered I left some words out of my previous entries! O_O;; I didn't remember the English words and I was supposed to check them, but I forgot! I have to correct that at once! Now, all done.

So, back to the baking stuff... Now I have all the ingredients here, so after the other girls finish in the kitchen I'm gonna go and have a try. I'm not really sure what I'm gonna use as the plate to bake them on, so I don't want the girls there when I'm trying to find something... (Though I only need it for tomorrow.) This whole cooking thing is so much based on guessing and improvising that I'd really rather do it alone ^_^;; And there's more room when I'm alone, anyway.

As for the Halloween, there's a party at Metro that night so I asked Heidi to go, but I'm not sure if she's up to it (she's been very busy and was awfully tired today) and I'm not even sure if she got my message... She has some trouble with her phone. I could ask the other exchange students, but I don't think I'll see them before next week. Then there are Heidi's friends... But I'm not sure if I have the "right" to ask them as they're not really my friends yet. I don't wanna go alone, though...

Ah, now I've been writing enough. On to drawing, scriptwriting and baking!

...

I was supposed to mention in my last entry that I bought manga again yesterday. I have to admit that I only bought it to see what the gift inside was... You see, there are sometimes little gifts that come with the weekly manga magazines. For the Hana to yume I got when I arrived here it was the Fruits Basket stickers and for this one it was a little plastic jewelry box. I have to say it looked nicer when I hadn't unwrapped it yet, but it serves its purpose as a case for my hair pins.

I was also supposed to mention how funny the advertisements on my headset box are... "Extreme PC Gaming Headset, the edge you need in online gaming!" It just makes me smile ^_^ And you should see the pictures.

...

Woo! I never got to do any of those things I said I would... Instead I wandered off to drool on net art :P (I recommend this site if you know Finnish.) Weehee~ I opened this text file again because I had something to say... But now I can't remember it anymore ^_^;; Well, enjoy random rambling!

...

Woo, this is starting to get really messy, this entry. But what's a diary without at least one of these sort of entries? ^_^ So, I made the peppercake dough. I rushed it a bit (a bad habit of mine when cooking), but it tastes all right so I think it'll be okay. If I can bake it somehow, that is. More imaginative cooking... I've always wanted to try to cook peppercake dough on a frying pan, though, so if nothing else I get to try that ^_^