Baking Frenzy

Tomorrow it will be one month since we moved into this house. For quite a while now, we've refrained from baking anything, or cooking anything that needed to rise or be measured accurately. For good reason. We have no measuring spoons, no measuring cups, and no baking powder or baking soda that looks anything like what we are used to. Here, baking powder is called "levure chimique" or "levure alsacienne" (see what I mean?), and it comes in tiny pink packages. Naturally, French people who go live in the U.S. think that American baking powder comes in HUGE containers and they're afraid to buy it, just as we hesitated here at first. Can this be the right stuff? Wrong shape, wrong color, wrong amount...but yes, it appears to be the right stuff.

Anyway, in the past couple of days, we couldn't stand it any longer, and we made waffles Sunday morning, then pancakes Monday morning AND a chocolate cake in the evening. All worked out fantastically, eyeballing the amounts and experimenting with the little sachets of white powder. It works! (of course it works, I can hear my sister-in-law saying, rolling her eyes and laughing at me... ;-). Here are our makeshift measuring implements and mixing bowls, the baking powder and the waffles: