A Meal at Home

The result of my successful shopping trip was a simple, home cooked meal. I made a mixed green salad and pasta in a red sauce with zucchini, capers, anchovies and basil. I even baked a cake. This was an adventure in and of itself.

I bought what I hoped was baking powder, flour (which smelled strangely sweet), and what I hoped was plain unsalted butter. The only cake pan in the store was about half the size of what I was looking for, but it was cute with scalloped edges, so I bought it. I chose an easy peach cake recipe and made it with canned peaches. I mixed all the ingredients in a soup pot since I don't have a mixing bowl yet and stirred everything in with a fork. Easy enough.

I'm very grateful for the Internet since it not only provided me with a cake recipe, but also converted Fahrenheit to Celsius so that I could figure out what to set the oven on.

Well the cake turned out fine. Not amazing, but considering most people here use their ovens as extra storage, I felt just using it was a success. The next day I made a tasty Seville orange sauce to go with the remaining two pieces. Believe me, if we didn't have airconditioning I would also only be using my oven as storage!

I had bought a cheap bottle of wine to celebrate my minor culinary success. Caleb and I sat down in front of the monitor to watch "Redeye", pasta bowls in hand, the smell of cake in the air, and it felt so good and routine, and right. Tradition. An evening at home, and that could be anywhere, with a glass of wine, dinner and a movie.