COOKIEEEEEES OM NOM NOM NOM NOM!

...I wonder if the Cookie Monster is single.  We have a lot in common.

Well, I made chocolate chip cookies from a bag today and it took more than three hours.  All those neat little ''prep time'' and ''bake time'' labels are convenient if you have a conventional oven.  There's even high altitude directions.  But where are the Guanacaste directions?  I don't think the Betty Crocker research and development takes into consideration that a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica will have to build a fire before baking the cookies.

And if only it were as easy as building the fire, like making s'mores in your best friend's back yard.  Nope, can't bake over an open fire like that.  So here's the process and just keep in mind...I did this all myself today.  My host mom poked her head outside while I was washing off the baking sheets I was going to use to tell me that if I needed anything, she was taking a nap but I should just come get her.  Well, I decided.  I'm only using the small oven that they built for the previous volunteer and my host mom never gets a break.  Time to buckle up and do it to it, alone.

First, like I said, I washed off the baking sheets that she uses for bread.  Not all of them, she has over fifty I think, so just like, four of them.  Then I went to the back of our shed, checking in corners for snakes like any good country girl, and loaded up on firewood.  I placed it inside the clay oven in the formation my host sister taught me, kind of like building a house out of Lincoln Logs but with some tinder in the middle.  To actually start the fire, I thought it would be pretty simple.  I've seen my host mom do it before.  She soaks an old, dry corn cob in camphor oil, lights it on fire and sticks it in the middle of the Lincoln Log cabin where the tinder is.  To my initial surprise, a little camphor oil and matches don't automatically mean that you can make a bonfire if your firewood is stacked poorly.  A lot of camphor oil and matches will do the trick, though.

So now that the fire is merrily burning, I need to go get an egg and a stick of margarine at the convenience store.  But I bring the machete because before I go into the store I can go behind it to cut some of the weeds that make good oven broom material (oven broom?!?  Just wait, I'm getting there).  So I step into the waist high weeds and try not to look too inept at using the same machete I've seen my six year-old cousin wield.  My personal victory in the field of being able to cut enough plants to make a broom is tempered only by the vast quantity of ant bites that are all over my feet.  I get the egg and the margarine and head home.  It's raining now, but I can't be deterred.

To the side of the bigger oven that I'm not using, I find a long branch with a pointed end that my host mom cuts to make oven brooms.  I also locate some metal wire and, grouping the weeds together at their cut ends, I wrap the wire tightly around the stems like I were making a really big, ugly bouquet.  So now that they're not falling apart I shove the pointy end of the stick into the bottom of the bouquet (that's what she said!  Heyooo!).  Thus, my oven broom is accomplished.  But the fire has not died yet, so I might as well go ahead and mix up my cookie dough.

Pretty straight forward.  Egg, air temp margarine, Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix.  My host mom has a hand mixer a lot like the one I have in the U.S.  I know the back of the bag says an un-greased cookie sheet but really...how much of what I'm describing is what the average cookie baker experiences?  So I grease the cookie sheets because my host mom gets upset when neighbors borrow them and return the sheets with crap all over them.  Make my rounded spoonfuls.  Check the oven.

Ready – the fire is burned down and now I have big glowing hunks of near-coals.  I take a stick and break up the firewood into small coals and distribute them over the bottom of the oven.  The oven itself is a half sphere shape sitting on a big blue metal trashcan.  Start sweating like crazy because it's still eighty degrees out even if it's raining.  As the coals heat the furthest recesses of the oven, I contemplate that because it's on a trashcan I might be baking a-la-hobo.  I also have time to ponder the sound of the Independence Day high school band marching.  In the United States too, I might have heard the drum line from the high school parking lot practicing at this time of year.

It's been a few minutes, so I go get the broom and stick it in the square opening on the front of the oven.  Using a sideways sweeping motion, I move all the embers towards the opening that's on the left side of the oven.  Once they're all more or less in the same spot I can reposition the broom to start shoving them out onto the ground.  Once they're all out, I take a bucket of water that I had on hand to pour on top of the hot coals that are now on the ground – unlike the big oven, there's no clay receptacle for the coals, just the dirt and the wall of the shed that is made of wood and dangerously close.  Not to mention that I've set my flip flops on fire before by standing too long on a live coal and it didn't help to convince my host mom and sister that I'm particularly competent using the oven.  I don't care to give a repeat performance.

I get three leaves from a tree close to the house and I throw the first one in and see how fast it burns.  Too fast.  I have to let the oven cool off or anything I put in it now will carbonize.  Might as well get a book.  I do, and I grab a stool so that I can stay outside close to the oven.  Some time goes by and I throw in the second leaf.  It takes a much longer time before it starts to curl and burn at the edges.  It's just about right (I guess?  I dunno, it seems like my host mom would say it's right) and I put up a sheet of metal to cover the hole on the left side so that heat doesn't escape.  Now, using a long wooden paddle I place the baking sheets with the cookies on them into the oven one at a time and put another sheet of metal on the front opening.

The first time I made cookies, I stupidly told my host sister it would take fifteen to eighteen minutes exactly for the cookies to bake.  It's what the package said.  That was before I considered that clay ovens in the shape of half spheres act like convection ovens.  There's heat from all sides and all at once.  Oh my word, I miss 30 Rock.  But yeah, every time that I've made cookies it takes a maximum of five minutes to bake and today was the same.  Once they were all golden-brown I used the wooden paddle to lift them out and place them on one of many work tables we have.

Let 'em cool, wash what needs washed, try not to get rained on (I'll get yelled at if my host mom awakes to see me sweaty and in the rain...something to do with drastic body temp changes and how it'll kill me.  Ticos have interesting concepts of cause and effect regarding illness).  And...I'm done!  I started at two o'clock and now it's about five thirty.  As I test a cookie to see how it turned out I realize that the whole process was absolutely worth it.

I set aside five or six for my family and the rest are for my boyfriend...celebrating the success of the Independence Day event, his new job in the Fuerza Pública and that we'll have been dating two months this Sunday.  Celebrating the completion of months as a couple is like, a big deal here and I did not know that until a month ago...oops.  It was just a good day to bake some cookies for my boy.

As a side note, I got to talk to my mom on the phone tonight and she said, ''Well, did you get to eat your chocolate chip cookie with a nice glass of milk?''  Nope.  Learning how to milk a cow is for another day in which I did not spend three and a half hours making two dozen cookies.