Umuganda Cookies!

So what does a pregnant girl do when she is hungry and craving cookies but all the shops are closed for the community work morning and she can't find a recipe that uses the ingredients she has on hand?  She creates her own cookie recipe!  Every last Saturday of the month here in Rwanda is a day we call "Umuganda."  On that day the people (or at least one person from each household) come together in the community and they do work together.  Maybe it is digging or cutting grass in the community or some other kind of project but it happens every last Saturday of every month.  All the shops are closed for the morning from around 8 until 12 ish, hense the reason I could not go to the store.  So I did something that I have never tried before...how hard could it be to create a simple cookie?  When I say simple, I mean simple, but in the end, after a near disaster, they actually taste great!  Just for fun, let me give you the recipe exactly the way I made it :)

Umuganda Cookies

Whatever margarine happens to be left in the container (it happened to be about 1/4 cup)
3/4 cup of shortening (or whatever it takes to make a total of one cup mixed with the margarine)
2 eggs (one Rwandan egg and one "muzungu" egg) *Rwandan eggs are generally smaller and have an almost             orange yolk, and for whatever reason they are also more expensive.  I think they come from a                   different kind of chicken?
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 teaspoon of almond flavoring
a pinch or two of salt

1) Cream together shortening and sugar.  Add eggs (cracking them into a separate container first to be sure they are good since I bought them from a young boy along the road :)  Mix well (by hand of course since we don't have an electric mixer)

2) Gradually add the flour, soda, and salt mixing well with each addition.  Add vanilla and almond flavoring.

3) Turn on gas, light the oven with a match.  Turn the dial between the third and forth dash (it has no temperature markings so I just take a wild guess!)  Remove the tray that came with the oven but also serves as a cookie sheet since I don't have one of those either.  Grease the tray.

4) Drop two dough blobs onto tray and put in oven to "see" what happens. Be sure the oven tray is all the way at the top of the oven to prevent burning since your oven is basically a box with fire on the bottom!  Haha, no fan to circulate heat evenly.  Turn the tray half way through baking time in attempt to bake more evenly.  Bake until you realize that it is not working and the cookies are completely flat and beginning to burn.  Remove from oven.  Take a break and have lunch while pondering what to do with the bowl of dough that seems to have been a total waste.

5) Decide to try again.  Add more flour (making a total of about 2 1/2 cups) to the dough and refrigerate for about an hour or two.

6) Light oven again.  Roll the now chilled and stiff dough into small balls, roll in sugar until coated, flatten with a fork and test two more cookies in the oven.  Bake for about 8 mins. or until light brown around the sides.  Hey, not bad!  Taste one and let your husband taste the other one.  He approves :)

7) Bake the rest of the cookies in the same way, rolling out little balls and coating in sugar, flattening with a fork.

8) Make a nice cup of tea for your husband and enjoy the cookies!

So, it was a bit of an experiment and this recipe probably totally confused you but it was a fun little project and I was actually pretty proud of the outcome :)