I had a million and one things to do before heading off to L.A. (can't wait to see you dear Mr. Sunshine!!) and then to Vancouver for the Circle Craft Christmas Market. You know how it is sometimes when you have a gazillion things to do but you suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to do something completely unnecessary? I guess it is the procrastinator in me. I stumbled upon this recipe I had torn out of a magazine. There was a feature on favourite picnic food and I was mesmerized by an oatmeal "flapjacks" recipe. They looked like oatmeal squares but with a touch of lemon. Packing and prepping be damned, it was time to make some oatmeal squares. I rationalized my stalling tactics by telling myself that I could take them with me on my travels as a healthy snack.
I should have known that things weren't going to work out. The instructions were in weight measures rather than by volume. Who knows how much 200 grams of butter is? I searched on the internet for a conversion and instead found persnickety online conversations along the lines of, "Well, you know the weight of a solid isn't the same as a liquid" and blah, blah, blah. Who cares? I just wanted to know how many cups of flour and butter I needed. The recipe called for golden syrup, which, thanks to my persnickety internet teachers, I learned, isn't the same as maple or corn syrup. It is a treacle, more akin to honey but not quite. I was getting tired. I almost packed it in when it called for Muscovado sugar (huh?) which is a dark brown sugar that isn't quite the same as brown sugar. Just how exotic were these oatmeal bars?!
I carried on to the best of my abilities, figuring out the measurements, using a combination of honey and maple syrup and hoping for the best. In the end my bars are more like a flaky baked granola - a far cry from packable tasty oatmeal bars. I guess I should have stuck with the packing and prepping.
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