Cooking in Portugal...kind of..

Baking Powder and Flour

1. At home  I was a pretty fair cook and was also known as a "cookie grandma." So I had confidence I could share some of my best recipes here.  Oh foolish woman.  For Family Home Evening I made "Carmelitas" which are basically like caremel brownies but with an oatmeal cookie base instead of brownie.  After searching for caramel in the local store (missionaries don't  have time to make caramels) and hurrying home to make the treats in time  for them to cool before family home evening I created my lovely cookies.  But wait, there were no mounds of cookie with delicious caremel wrapping itself around and over.  There was just a pan of brownstuff that looked like it had been deep fryed.  Gale did the taste test (it's his favorite job in the kitchen) and said that they were good.
2. So I took them  to FHE and they were a sensation  as had been the apple pie bars the week before.  But, they weren't really carmelitas.  So the next week I carefully squeezed the lemon juice and baked the crust a bit more so that it would stay seperate from the filling in the lemon bars but, thats right lemon flavored glop.  Some loved it, some hated it (and let me know with ugly faces etc) but it was definately a bomb. Water takes forever here to boil.  Anyway, I looked up cooking at sea level and there was a list of 6 things you had to do to adjust your recipes.  So, I won't be making bread from the  recipe that  I have honed  for  30 years,  and I'm not sure about trying cookies ..Dad says that it takes an act of Congress to brown  French Toast..  Dad had a hankering for Bacon to go with his breakfast and  maybe those lovely tomatoes we bought at a fruit stand so he found some at the grocery store.  When we got home and translated the package it was a cut from the leg of a pig.  Oh well, try anything once, right.  So we cooked it in the microwave for like 15 minutes.  It wasn't too bad but our apartment smelled like smoked pig for a week and  even though we boiled water in the microwave a couple of times and cleaned and cleaned it you still get a  whiff of smoke when you open  the door.  
3. The meat department is a trip.  The bulk of it is full of this dried fish that have been split and  dried in salt.  You just grab a giant fish and throw it in your cart.Most of the meat department is fish, or eel, or shrimp, octipus or clams or muscles.
4. Today I made potatoe salad.  And it actually tastes almost like home.  Helmans mayonaise is  not as good as Best Foods but in a pinch it was great. I want to make Cafe Rio salad and got the recipe off of Mellonees Blog but haven't been able to find Dill weed  We have to go to Lisbon next week and  I may look in the American store for that and  Maple flavoring anyway it is an adventure every day in  my new kitchen.