Mama Mia! Cooking in Romania!

One of the classes the H2H missionaries teach at the orphanage is cooking.  There are 4-5 kids in this class and they meet once a month.  So far, they have learned how to make many traditional Romanian cookies and sweets.  They even provided the goodies for a special 'mother's day' celebration and received rave reviews of their food!

During the week after Easter, we had the cooking girls (there's usually one boy but he was out that day) come to the H2H Girls Transition House for a lesson in Italian cooking.  Disclaimer: No Italians were harmed in the making of this excursion.  There also were not any real Italians present during this class.  But we did what we could with what we had ;)

So first, we had a taste test of common ingredients used in Italian cooking.

Dried oregano anyone?

How about onion and garlic?  They actually really like the garlic... weird Romanians [insert your favorite Dracula joke here]

Then we got down to cooking.  We made a Tomato and Mozzarella Salad (new cheese for Romanian orphans!!)

And also a basic tomato sauce and spaghetti.


And Italian cookies of for dessert.  My favorite moment was watching the girls read the recipe and then assign tasks to each other.  Example: "We need 3 cups of flour.  You three each get to add one cup and I get to stir."  Or, "We need 5 tablespoons of baking powder.  You each get to add one spoon and I will add two!"

After a concentrated effort by all, we sat down to enjoy our meal!  The sauce was a bit too peppery but the girls still enthusiastically consumed- they did all the hard work anyway and I think we excited to try a meal that they prepared from the beginning.