Tuesday, January 18, 2005

The Great Vanilla Quest

I brought every spice known to man with me on this trip, after the difficulty I had while in Spain tracking down a few things. However, the one thing that did not occur to me to bring, because it seemed like such a given that you would be able to find it anywhere, was vanilla extract. To my ultimate disappointment, this was not the case. It cannot be found in Kosovo. Nor can it be found in Skopje. Nor anywhere else in the Balkans. So I put the feelers out to several friends going abroad for the holidays to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring me some vanilla. It worked. My friend Sven brought me the biggest fattest bottle of Adam's Best Vanilla Extract back from NY and gave it to me on Saturday night. I was so incredibly excited... I was going to make cookies galore as soon as I got it home. I had the precious cargo in my purse, and as I was fumbling in the dark for my keys (as the power was out yet again), the bottle tumbled, seemingly in slow motion, to the cold, hard tile floor below. As it reached it's final resting point, the heavenly aroma of vanilla filled the vestibule of my apartment building, and a dark brown puddle seeped out of the box as the bottle expired, shattered into a thousand tiny shards of glass and essence of sweetness all over the floor. I could have cried. I think tears may have actually welled up in my eyes. Gone in an instant were the dreams of Toll house chocolate chip cookies. Visions of sugar cookies danced before me, mocking me, taunting me... neener neener neener. Thwarted in my plans of totally indulging in fattening bliss. Boo, hisss. I'm not on a diet here, people!! I can have cookies!!! I NEED cookies. I guess I'll have to resort to Plan B - look for vanilla in Budapest. Either that or plant a vanilla tree. (Do vanilla beans grow on trees?) That's right, the girl who can't keep an aloe vera plant alive to grow her own spices.... hahahahahhahahahaha. These are the lengths I will go to for chocolate chip cookies. And I'm dead serious. :P

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