Lots to Learn Before I Get Married!

Don't jump to any conclusions from this post's title. It was just something one of the Casa Alba ladies told me today when Kari and I were there to do the program with the kids.
Tomorrow I will be by myself and I didn't think I could do both puppets alone. So instead of just doing the puppet show for some of them today, and none of them tomorrow, we opted for cookie making day. Maybe a little last minute but it turned into a really great experience for the kids. And, it's something that I'll (hopefully) be able to handle by myself with the rest of the kids tomorrow. I would say the majority of our kids at Casa Alba have never made cookies before. Or, for that matter, helped "mom or dad" in the kitchen at all. Their meals are prepared, plated and brought to them for every meal. So for them to make the cookies themselves (and they really did for the most part) was like a trip to Disneyland. And the other kids who'll I'll do it with tomorrow could barely handle the fact that they weren't going to make them today! So how did this turn to marriage? I'll tell you. The recipe for the cookies said UNGREASED cookie sheet. No greasing, I didn't grease. The cookies stuck a little but honestly didn't require much elbow grease to clean up later on. But, the Romanian ladies working at Casa Alba thought that I just didn't know to put oil (ulei) or margarine (margarina) on it first. The one lady said, in response to this, "You have a lot to learn before you get married. Don't worry though, you'll learn. I learned a lot my first year of marriage. You'll learn." Hello, hello where did that comment come from? I told her "The recipe said ungreased cookie sheet." But I'm guessing that "ungreased cookie sheet" is not a common practice here. To appease her I put margarina on the final tray. She also suggested a combination of ulei si margarina. I wasn't about to venture into that. Just stuck with wiping the butter wrapper over the cookie sheet instead. The cookies turned out so-so, mainly because we only had a cheap-o gas oven to work with. Gas ovens are really hard to use, especially when baking things that need to have heat coming from top and bottem. These gas ovens only have heat from the bottem so most times everything gets black below super fast. I've given up trying to make any type of bread, baked goods in my oven here at home. Just doesn't work. The kids liked the cookies though - that's what matters!