Tollhouse Cookies in Norway

Ever bake in another country? Determined to have something "very us" while in Norway during our Christmas celebration- I decided to make Tollhouse cookies from scratch. So - It began with 4 trips to the grocery store for some very familiar items.. First - vanilla (extract drops instead- think rum or orange to visualize), then chocolate baking bars (land of no chocolate chips it seems), then brown sugar- man no one had brown sugar and the stuff we did find- ???? think it was white granulations with molasses poured on them-etc) for the rest- thank goodness for pictures on packaging.

Since I now have grocery shopping experience in Norway-Has anyone been to one? It's almost like they've hidden the good food until Russia attacks or something. I mean for a country that war rated the best place to live for many years- you'd expect the grocery stores to be like heaven on earth. Instead- think WWII bomb shelter- It looks like Ikea-but not as clean- you can see the rafters and wires still hanging in most. Oh and by the way- while you are there-how about some Ice skates, underwear and a blanket for your bed?? Somewhere in all of that you will find Vitamins-etc. They are more like Pik N Save or Save A Lots for any of you that have adventured on the wild side of American grocery stores. I mean they are far worse then Price Chopper- my personal fav...

I'm now convinced having been to both Norway and Iceland in the past year- Iceland has moved up on the list of best places to live knocking Norway to #2 because they have sexier grocery stores. I know I'm sounding like quite the fatty patty here :-)- but really- I just dig visiting a cultures grocery stores. So, to the King and Queen of Norway-please note that in my shallow little opinion- (your stuff is so darn expensive "think literally whole paycheck")- Norwegian citizens should have a nice market to buy their groceries in. After all - it's pretty much a mom's big night out isn't it??? At least that's the horror stories people like to say tell us 'non-parents'.

Okay- enough of my tangent- back to the Tollhouse Adventure:

Convert the recipe to metrics (should have done this before going to grocery store) - don't forget the temperature to set the stove (190C) (Conversions have never been an easy task for this lazy American) and then mix them and start baking. Sounds fairly simple doesn't it??

So we start with chopping up lot's of grams of chocolate from a large bar- oops we seem to only have 1/2 the grams we need-darn- oh well not going to grocery store for 5th time- continue on.. add "vanilla" extract (a few dashes), mix in some flour- at least the bag looks like flour, hmmm more ingredients.. let's see.. is that margarine or butter exactly(still not sure-but it's yummy)..
Now it's literally an entire day later.. the batter is complete and stove is warm.. we taste the cookies... Something was missing.

Oh I know, I know..It must be that store bought everyone's too busy holiday flavor.. so we took a bag of "better crocker" pre-made cookie mix that we brought with us and dumped it in this batter. Ahhh- just right. And the x-pats at the party- couldn't get enough of the cookies. They had "missed" them so much! Laugh. I on the other hand. am going to go make some home made cookies. A few words of advice.. when you want something to taste like home- even though I'd hate to ever admit this- bring a box mix :-) and the crowd will go wild. Ha ha..