No Lemons on Lockdown? Make Lemonade Anyway

Dancing Raindrops for Agata

Theodore Roosevelt said, "Do what you can with what you have where you are."  As an American expat in Italy, I've been heeding his advice since touchdown. I lived without Diet Coke in pizzerias for several years until Italians finally discovered Coca Zero. Cutting chocolate bars to make chocolate chips is a lot easier than it used to be. And going from no internet to slow internet is promising.

Last week I heard that a little girl in my borghetto (little neighborhood) was about to have a coronavirus lockdown birthday. All I know about Agata is that she loves to be outside and every time she rides by on her blue bike she says, "Hell-0" (it rhymes with Jell-0). If her 8th birthday hadn't been on the 26th day of lockdown, I know she would've been with her friends and  extended family. But since they were off limits, I decided to add something to this year's unusual birthday celebration. 

I wanted to write on her driveway with sidewalk chalk, but I had no chalk. I didn't have any helium for my balloons either and I hate breath-filled balloons taped to the wall and tied to light fixtures.  They look upsidedown and make me sad instead of happy.  I do like carpets of balloons that silently float away as you walk through them, but in the grass the silence would have been a pop concert.

My Theodore Roosevelt solution was to tie the balloons to an open umbrella and prop the umbrella in the plant at the end of Agata's driveway. I called the piece DANCING RAINDROPS and I thought it made a nice addition to the rainbow installation at the end of my driveway.  I wrapped up a pack of handmade English/Italian flashcards and offered free pronunciation tips every time she passes on her bike.

Sadly aware that a piece of Agata's chocolate birthday cake wouldn't go down well  under the circumstances (coronavirus), I decided to bake my own. Since Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines aren't expats, I've learned to make chocolate cake from scratch, but it takes cocoa which wasn't on the last lockdown shopping list.

I moved on to pumpkin bread. It seems a little strange in April, but I had a can of soon to expire pumpkin puree (almost Libby's, which I consider my greatest find of 2019). Unfortunately, the pumpkin bread recipe also lacked an ingredient. It was time to do what I could with what I had and get a little help from the slow internet. Thanks to my mother-in-law's Snickerdoodle recipe, I had a half teaspoon of cream of tartar which when mixed with a quarter teaspoon of baking soda equals a teaspoon of the missing ingredient...baking powder.

The recipe makes two loaves, but I only have one bread pan. I did what I could with a baking dish which in the end seems to have been the secret ingredient. Upon first bite I heard, "Perche' mi hai detto che stavi facendo pane di zucca? Questa e' una torta."   (Why did you tell me you were making pumpkin bread?  This is cake.)     

With the advice of Mr. Roosevelt, I turned upsidedown balloons into dancing raindrops, cream of tartar into baking powder and bread into cake.  Now it's time to see what you can do.