Jenica in Argentina: Frying Potatoes...Without the Flying Pan!

Now I have had to go through some hard things in my life but let me introduce you to one I never saw coming. The difficulty of frying food....but without the flying pans! This last Sunday I had the wonderful oppurtunity to cook United States type food for my family for lunch. I chose omelets and my favorite poppy seed cake for dessert. So to start this story off right, I should tell you that I was planning on baking the cake Saturday because it is much better when it is cooled and that way I could have more time on Sunday so I could do everything before lunch. Unfortuntelly, I lost the recipe. Not that you should be surprised by that or anything because I often do that. What was shocking was that even with everyone looking all over the house, in my room, under my bed, in the trash, for over an hour, we still couldn´t find it. And since my mom had mailed it to me, I didn´t have a copy of it on the computer. I that point I was starting to feel really disapointed but I sent an emergency help request to my sister and mom to scan the recipe and email it to me before the next morning. Then, I was invited to a party that night. I was already going to be crunched for time the next morning but there was no way I could turn down a party. :) So I got home at two in the morning and slept until 11. I started cooking at about twelve and theoretically it should have only took twenty minutes at MAX to get the cake into the oven. But then I had a panic attack. :) When I opened the looked closely at the poppy seeds I had bought (on my own), I noticed that the black seeds were mixed with a lot of grey ones. I didn´t remember any grey ones being in our cakes at home. I quickly began researching on the internet and freaked out when I learned that there is a difference between baking poppy seeds and ones for planting. And one source said (which I have now found to be inaccurate) that planting poppy seeds can be poisonous to humans. Oh crap! I was going to poison my family! So as you can guess, that was when my panic attack set it. Thankfully, after talking to my family about it they assured me that these were the poppy seeds my sister had cooked with before and since I purchased them at a food store, I was sure to be fine. Not only did my panic attack tick down the minutes but the fact that my recipe used cups and the only measuring stuff here is in grams. I had to research the converstion for each ingredient and then measure it out. Taking notes to make sure that I wouldn´t have to do it over again next time. I finally finished the cake and got the chocolate ganache frosting cooling at two o´clock. I think two hours baking a cake must be some kind of record because it should have never taken that long.

Normally we eat lunch at about two ish but there was no way I could make omelets and fry potatoes in zero seconds. Now matter how awesome I am at a lot of things, I just haven´t mastered pulling that one off yet. So Elsa ended up helping me with peeling the potatoes and chopping up the vegetables. Now I have to thank my Dad at this point for raising me with such a good collection of frying pans because when I went to put the potatoes on the stove, I only found one. Yep, that´s right. I was supposed to fry potatoes, fry vegetables, and cook the omelets all with only one frying pan. I figured I was best off using the pan for the omelets because I didn´t want to try to cook those in a soup pot. That wouldn´t work out to well. So that left my potatoes pilled up in a soup pot and my vegetables dumped into what I can best describe as a container to heat water in on the stove. Quickly my potatoes began sticking to the pan, my vegetables turned into soup, and I was running out of time. Thankfully, at about three o´clock I was able to finish everything and we were able to sit down to lunch. I have to say, it all turned out well in the end. The omelets were filled with ham, cheese, onions, mushrooms, with potatoes and tomatoes on top and for dessert we had a fantastic poppy seed cake. All of which my family loved very much.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience although next time I am going to start a lot earlier. I would also advise anyone trying to fry food - make sure they have got a frying pan first! It was a blast to share a little bit of my home with my family here and I can´t wait to do it again!