Arlene of our staff shared the following delightful story
with me the other day:
"I answered the quiet knock at my door, wondering who could
be there. As an American attending a Spanish language
school in Guadalajara, Mexico, I was very new to my
neighborhood. A shy smile greeted me, and a 5-year-old
little boy said softly, "My mother sent this over for you.
She wanted you to try some special Mexican food." The
plate he thrust into my hands contained what I recognized
as chiles rellenos, mild chilies stuffed with cheese and
fried in a foamy egg batter. They're delicious! Instead
of simply acknowledging my appreciation for his mother's
kind gesture, I followed the local custom of saying, "Thank
you, I'll return the plate later." I had learned that the
one who receives the food should return the plate filled
with a similar gift. Inwardly, I congratulated myself on
how well I was learning about the culture.
Now, which was good practice for today's MyHATT
responsibilities, I wondered what would be the best food to
return to my neighbors. It should be something the whole
family could enjoy, and it would be nice to give them
something typically American as a special treat. As my
brain ran through a list of possibilities, it stopped on
chocolate chip cookies. What could be better? They would
make an especially nice gift because at that time chocolate
chips weren't available in the stores in our area of the
city. I had just driven up to the border the week prior to
renew my visa and shopped for some staples in a large
grocery store while there, so I was well stocked with
baking supplies.
As I mixed the dough, I decided to add some nuts and
raisins. Okay, so they wouldn't be typical chocolate chip
cookies after all, but my neighbors would enjoy the taste.
I had read in a magazine that adding some instant coffee to
cookie dough bumps up the flavor, so included a teaspoon of
that too.
My sparsely furnished home didn't have a stove with an
oven, but that wasn't going to ruin my plan. I knew that
some cookies could be baked in an electric skillet, so
decided to give it a try. I plugged in the skillet and
placed a coffee can lid in the center to serve as a trivet.
While it heated I looked for a pan that would fit in the
limited space the skillet provided. The only one I could
find that wasn't too large was a 9-inch cake pan. That'll
work, I thought. There was just one little
problem—the cake pan could only accommodate four
cookies at a time. I wasn't about to give up now. It
would just take more batches to use up all of the sweet,
spicy dough. When I started my little cooking operation I
had no idea that each batch took more than 30 minutes to
cook due to the reduced heat. The old electric skillet I
had at the time just didn't match a nice hot oven.
Finally, after working in the kitchen for some three hours,
all of the cookies were baked and I was feeling quite
satisfied with my ingenuity.
The next day when I saw my neighbor boy playing in his
yard, I called him over and handed off the plate of cookies
to give to his mother. She came over later that afternoon
and told me how good the cookies were and that her family
enjoyed them very much. "I ate so many of them," she
commented, "and they were delicious. What secret
ingredient did you use to make them so tasty?"
I thought about the ingredients the cookies contained, and
the only unusual one was the instant coffee. Since I was
just learning Spanish, it was a challenge to carry on more
than just a very simple conversation. I wanted to explain
about the "secret ingredient," the instant coffee, so I
quickly formulated the sentence in my mind before
verbalizing it. In English when we combine chocolate and
coffee we call the flavor mocha, but how would I say that
in Spanish? To tell my neighbor the cookies were mocha
flavored I would need to use the phrase savor de moca, but
we had just learned in language school that the noun (savor
in this case) needed to match the adjective (moca), so I
thought the last letter of moca should probably be changed
from an "a" to an "o" to make it grammatically correct. Oh
well, I thought, what's one little letter? So I told her
my secret ingredient was savor de moco. As soon as the
words left my mouth I saw the pleasant expression on her
face turn to one of shock. My first thought was that my
accent wasn't good enough and she had misunderstood me, so
I repeated the phrase, slowly and more carefully. When her
reaction remained the same I knew I had somehow blown it
badly. Moco, moco, I thought, where had I heard that word
before? And then I remembered—the only time that
word had been used in my presence was when my neighbor's
children had very runny noses from a cold! As I fumbled in
Spanish, trying to explain what I really meant, the poor
woman was probably wondering what kind of a crazy "Gringo"
she had living next door. Needless to say, she didn't send
over any more gifts of Mexican food for me to sample.
Oh, sure, I was really understanding the culture and
learning the language—right!
My friends have heard the story over the years, and all I
have to ask when they come to my home is, "cookies,
anyone?" and everyone has a good laugh as they remember my
"secret ingredient." They love to say, running the last
two words together slightly, "You may think it's a cookie,
but it's not.""
----------------------------------------------------
Jeff Gustafson and MyHATT, An international dinner club
concept where people get to know people one bite at a
time...thank you to Arlene Hawkinson and my entire MyHATT
contributing staff for the educational content for world
culture, the history, world traditions, the international
menus for this wondeful family activity website...
http://www.myhatt.com
