Molasses Puzzle Solved
Seeing as I had finally found molasses I decided that I better bake cookies. After I had them baked I took a plateful of them and the jar of molasses down to our landlady. She tasted the molasses and a lightbulb went off. It is the same as the piloncillos she says, the cones of brown sugar that you see everywhere in the stores. She says that you put a little water in a pan and melt the cone and then use it in your recipe. I am not sure how that would affect your sugar ratio in the recipe though, so I will have to stick with the already liquid form. You can also buy piloncillos in squares (rather than cones)with nuts, peanuts, etc. already in them. Ah...when I googled "piloncillos", I found a site that says to boil a piloncillo with a bit of water to make a molasses syrup. The ratio seems to be that 2 cones equal 1 cup of sugar. A couple of days later when Ciro and Irene were up visiting, they were telling me of a place in Sonora where apparently they grow the sugarcane and process it into the piloncillos. They said that you can go there and buy the liquid molasses also; but it is about 100 miles from here, more or less. The cones are made just for ease of transport, etc..
Roy drove me to spanish class on Thursday and we returned to the store to see if she had managed to get the easel. It was sitting out waiting for us and after checking that all the bits and pieces were there, we purchased it. Merry Christmas to us, (this was what we decided to get for our Christmas "gift").
Yesterday (Saturday), Roy and Ciro went fishing in the early afternoon. Around 5 PM, Irene and I were off to a baby shower for one of her nieces. We stopped at a couple of places on the way, first to say hello to some of her relatives and then to pick up her sister from work. Unfortunately her sister had to work until 7 PM so could not attend. Irene also pointed out where other members of her family live on the way to the salon where the shower was being held.
The baby is not born yet; but they know that it is going to be a girl, so everything was decorated with pink. The white tablecloths had overthrows of pink gingham with ceramic centerpieces of babies, each table had a different ceramic baby on it, so we wandered around looking at them all. There was a huge stork with his bundle holding a baby, a large floral arrangement on the main table, etc.. It was very pretty. We were each given a little thing to pin to our blouse, mine was a tiny baby bib with little colored balls inside, Irenes was a little angel head with wings. The momma to be had a pink corsage. We sat and visited with others, I actually recognised some of the ladies from the birthday party that we had attended earlier this month. Everyone sat around the tables visiting and snacking, I met lots of new people; but of course cannot remember names as usual. Some pictures were taken by the gift table, Irene obviously doesn't know how much I hate having my picture taken, as she dragged me along. A lady came in and did a bit of a show, I am not sure who she was impersonating; but she seemed to be known by everyone there. We were served a late dinner at around 9:30 which was very good. The meat was pork roasted with pinapple and was very tender and delicious, Irene said she will give me the recipe for it. Shortly after eating, we made our farewells and left, returning home around 10 PM. An enjoyable evening; but also one which showed me just how little spanish I do know and what a long road I have yet to travel to fluency. I probably understood about 20 % of the conversations. It was a good gabfest for the ladies and a fun time. Thank goodness there were none of the silly games played, like they used to do in Canada, how I hated those games.
I haven't touched my spanish homework so need to get at that today and also need to do some laundry.
