Me vs. the oven, and one snail

Well, I finally bit the bullet and figured out the oven. Kind of.

First of all, this oven comes from IKEA, so it can't be that weird. And although the instructions are in Polish, I do have a native speaker that lives in the same flat as me, you would think this wouldn't be such a big deal. Honestly, we just haven't had the time to figure out anythign more than the mocrwave to re-heat food, until today.

I decide to take a chance with something simple.

Sugar cookies.

Ingredients (pictures taken with my IPod, NOT my fancy new camera which we don't have an adapter for yet...grrr...)...

Unsalted butter. 200g = 14tblsp = 1 3/4 cups, just the amount I needed.  I know this now. I know things.

Flour (Mąka) and Sugar (Cukier). Notice: the flour bag is not that much bigger than the sugar bag. This is the 3rd bag of flour we've opened since we've been here. Why are the bags of flour so small, Poland? Why?

Vanilla. I know. I was confused as well. Even more confusing is that the recipe calls for 2tsp. But this stuff is the "aroma" of vanilla and incredibly thick. I used only one tsp. and it turned out fine. 2 tsps. would have killed us. Oh, and 2 tsp. would have used the entire bottle.

Baking Powder. Comes in packets. I'd say about 3tsp. worth in one packet. One batch of pancakes for our family takes 2 1/2 packets. We have lots of packets.
Packets.

Eggs. The eggs here are rainbow colored. By which I mean that each one has a different colored "white." So, one might be blue, another green, and if you're really lucky, you get one with all the colors, Martin says it's because the mountains are nearby and the air does something strange to the chickens.... or I might be making all that up.
 Eggs are eggs, ya'll...nothin' to see here...move along...

All of these things, (plus some Wieliczka salt), together, produced this...

A little unevenly baked perhaps but tasty.

Delicious, tastes-just-like-they-should-albeit-a-little-flat-sugar-cookies. I blame the flatness on the sugar OR the extra yolk in my double yolk egg that got in there. It happens.

The oven. Well, it did it's best to discourage me. It has three different oven settings. Convection from the sides, convection from the top, and conventional. It didn't fool me with it's fanciness. I chose conventional because I'm conservative like that and it worked alright. Every time I opened the door the oven wanted to shut off. It's an environmentally friendly oven, it cares about the ozone. Or it's just lazy. There was a lot of extra beeping that went on, because it's also a G rated oven, and some flashing lights...I don't know what all that was about. But, I will, in the end, prevail, of course. Because I have a brain, and the oven, decidedly, does not.

The children were very eager to try the cookies. I let them all have one and then sent them outside in their galoshes, as it had just stopped raining. At which time they found a lovely (huge) snail with a broken shell. They were all a bit concerned for the snail. I was a little concerned as well, but what are you gonna' do? That's nature (Goulet!...sorry, had to throw that in there, just ignore it).

We don't have snails in Texas. There just isn't enough rain. But here in Poland they are absolutely everywhere, and I think they are awesome. I never get bored watching them. Nor do the children. So here you go... (you also get to hear Martin try to teach Kacio how to say "Felek," to no avail).