This past Sunday at ICA Tokyo, we held our monthly church potluck with many guests present due to the Phil Stacey concert held that morning (an evangelistic outreach to bring many new people to hear about God's love). It was my solemn duty as a new pastor to bring something very American to this largely Asian food mosaic. I chose what any good American girl would choose: cookies! Oatmeal chocolate chip, of course!
Now, this being one of my first forays into the baking world outside of US, I was fairly confident in my ability to whip up a batch of cookies while armed with my box mix I brought from home. Add eggs and butter, mix, bake, done. Right?
No.
Why? Because this is Japan. Not America.
I had neglected to purchase enough butter required for the recipe and ended up Google-searching a substitution: vegetable oil. Good, I had that. Now, on to the actual measuring. One half-cup of oil. Now, where to find US measuring cups in a Japanese kitchen? Back to Google: "metric conversions". Got it. Measured the oil, mixed in the egg, and things are looking great. Crisis averted.
Now, something about most Japanese kitchens in Tokyo is that they are generally too small for ovens. Most don't have large ovens like American kitchens. They have nifty microwave/convection ovens that function as both a microwave AND oven! Very handy! But there's a catch.
Stay cool. What do I do? Okay, think this through:
Whip out Japanese dictionary app to figure out which button works the oven (NOT the microwave) and how to set the temperature. Back to Google for more conversions. 350 degrees Fahrenheit equals 175 degrees Celsius. The microwave oven only sets to 170 or 180 degrees. Take the dark cooking sheet into consideration. Adjust approximate cooking time. Rethink cooking time to factor in lack of pre-heating feature. Set oven to bake for 1 hour just to be safe. Oven shuts off after only 10 minutes. Reset oven. Cookies done after 4 additional minutes. Stop oven, remove cookies, replace with new cookie dough, reset oven. Oven shuts off after 10 minutes. Reset oven again. Cookie batch #2 complete. Reset everything again. Repeat.
It took me 3 hours to bake 24 cookies. But they were the best-tasking cookies I've ever made in a foreign country! Needless to say, they were missing from their plate by the end of the potluck.
One cross-cultural experience down, with many more to come!
Thank you again to everyone who is supporting me! You are all amazing and your thoughts and prayers keep me steady though the crazy days. Thank you, thank you!
~ Amanda
