4th of July

From the stories I have received it sounds like everyone had a good 4th of July celebration. Well me too, just a bit different. On Friday I agreed to cook a traditional American meal for my co-workers. This was to consist of cheeseburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, chips and watermelon. Here the problems begin...

I really wanted to grill cheeseburgers. But I couldn't find any frozen patties and the fresh stuff at Wal-Mart just didn't look that appealing. So I made a switch on the fly to chicken breasts, no big deal.

On Friday AM we went back to Wal-Mart to buy a charcoal grill. Total hunk of junk! In fact it was missing all the hardware so we had to go back and exchange. Meanwhile everyone is getting hungry! When we lit the charcoal didn't stay lit for long. So we literally started some of the charcoal by putting it on the stovetop! It worked too. The briquettes finally turn ashen and seem hot enough so the chicken goes on. Then it pretty much comes to a stop. The fire died in the middle of cooking. I literally had to take the chicken and cook them in a pan inside to finish. That sucked!

Surprisingly my team loved it. They actually ate everything I bought and barely left any for me. If it hadn't been for someone saving me a plate they would have eaten mine too. As you look closely you see chopsticks. Not typical BBQ right? Well I didn't realize we have no forks. So we had to eat the potato salad with the chopsticks. And since I was late there were no buns left for my sandwich so I had to cut my chicken using the 1 knife and chopsticks. Too funny!
All in all they want me to cook more often which is cool. Even the husban of our cook would like me to cook more!

On Friday night my one American friend organized a group of us to get together at an American restaurant/bar. She supplied the decorations of red, white and blue and we got a bunch of Europeans to support us for the night! All in all a good time. (The thumbs up was done as a salute to a former expat if you were wondering.)