I want to add a couple more stories as a sort of postscript to the Puzzling blog. Stories from our trip, stories about plans that didn’t turn out quite the way I expected.

I made a Strawberry (Jello) Pretzel Salad tonight. I tried to make one in New Zealand for the rehearsal dinner and it didn’t work at all. First of all, where our grocery store has about 20 different packages of pretzels to choose from, New Zealand stores have either none or maybe one or two types. I never found stick pretzels at all, and finally settled on a very small package of another kind. That’s the first layer.

The second layer is made of cream cheese, sugar and Cool Whip. No Cool Whip in New Zealand, of course, or other non-dairy creamer. But I looked through the dairy section and bought whip cream and something like creme fraiche or maybe it was creme anglaise. Mixed together, it seemed to be a reasonable match so I spread it over the pretzel layer and put it in the refrigerator.

Next I made the “jelly” layer. The boxes looked pretty much like ours and said something about gelatin so I figured it was the same thing. Frozen strawberries (or any strawberries for that matter) were not to be had, however. I decided to just add a layer of jello and worry about the strawberries later (presuming John would bring some home on his trip to the store. Not.)

It didn’t matter because when I pulled the pan out of the refrigerator to see how the jelly/jello was setting, it wasn’t. It had all disappeared into the cream cheese layer. What the heck? I ended up dumping the whole thing. Anne said I should have kept it because even if it looked awful, it would still tasted reasonably the same. (She knew because she’d tried to make the recipe for 50 Capernwray students once and had the same results. I remembered a few panicked phone calls asking for help in the process.)

At the time (and a few other times) I assumed that Anne just didn’t know the stores or the supplies available. She had the same problem for awhile with pie crusts because they don’t carry Crisco. She has since learned to make butter crusts and/or to use Edmonds Pastry which comes in several varieties and works quite nicely.

I was looking forward to spending some time in the stores figuring out how to make substitutions for our recipes. I learned the hard way that it might be better to just use kiwi recipes. (I did that too, learning to make hokey pokey with golden syrup and baking powder and hokey pokey biscuits (what we call cookies.) As far as I can figure out, Americans don’t have the equivalent of golden syrup so it works both ways.

 

Minced meat is ground meat, what we call hamburger. Corned beef is a common meal, served up with a homemade mustard sauce. Tomato (pronounced with the emphasis on the “ma”) sauce is ketchup so you have to look for cans of tomato puree if you need sauce for the taco recipe.

Another plan that we had was to save the money on renting a car and use that money to help Anne buy one. We sent money ahead but they weren’t able to find a car before we arrived. Anne had borrowed a car that took care of our needs (and hers) during the pre-wedding week, but we felt that we needed to return that after the wedding. One of the bridesmaid’s Dad offered John the use of a car for the rest of our trip. (Josie and her twin brother, Scott, had visited Chicago in December.) We decided to take him up on his offer so arranged to pick up their car and drop the other one off before heading out for our day’s adventure. Brent had planned to lend us one of his company cars, but at the last minute decided to lend us Josie’s car and let her drive the company car. Good decision.

I was following John, my first time driving on this trip, as we made our way to drop off the other car. We came to a one-way bridge with a light at both ends. A biker started across against the light and John decided to follow. I was unsure of what to do and not really paying attention to the left side of my car (which spatially was not in my normal frame of reference way over there from where I was sitting in the right-side drivers seat.) I inched forward–smack into the concrete side of the bridge. I’d been driving all of about twenty minutes and I put a big dent into the bumper.

A day or so later we confessed our “sins” to the owner–who was extremely gracious–and made arrangements to have the car fixed after we left. $450. Later that week, John backed the car into a low post at Monavale and put another big dent in the rear bumper. (We felt like idiots and apologized profusely, but once again, the Martins smiled and commiserated with us.) Now we were up to about $1000 in repairs, the amount we’d send to James and Anne for a car.

A few days later, Brent offered to sell the car to James and Anne for just a bit more than that, so we decided (with them) to buy the car and hand it over to Anne. John spent an afternoon bumping out both dents and realigning the light. So it looks pretty much like the kind of car that Anne is used to, it drives well, and they can take their time choosing a better car when they want it.

(On John’s last trip, a hit-and-run sideswiping driver, left John with an additional repair bill of $1200 on the damages. We’re thinking that we should just budget about that much on future trips for accidents 🙂

Even small disasters can somehow work together for good. Life, driving and cooking will continue to challenge us, puzzling us, and teaching us to roll with the punches.

Many are the plans of a (wo)man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21