Nous prévoyons un repas grec

In my previous post, I mentioned a lunch that Jon and I had with a few classmates of ours, and that this week we’d be hosting one of our own.  After pondering on a cuisine type for a day or so, we landed on Greek.  Obviously, Jon and I are not Greek, but we’re firm believers in the fact that there is very little that one could call “American Food”, with the exception of soul food, which would involve frying chicken, and I don’t want to try that for the first time for a bunch of new friends.  So therefore opted for one of our favorites.  Our choice may have been swayed slightly by the fact that we’ve been craving tzatziki sauce basically since we got here, but that is neither here nor there.

However, planning a meal for people of many different cultural and religious backgrounds could be a little difficult.  For instance, Khalid and Doha are both from Saudi Arabia, and Muslim, so pork is not an option.  Fine by me, its neither my favorite nor Jon’s.  But Neelima is from India, so Hindu, and cannot eat beef.  So that leaves us with chicken, lamb, and fish.  Lamb would be classically Greek, so definitely an option.  Fish isn’t possible because I’m weary of serving fish that isn’t purchased that day, which would make having a quick lunch after class a little more difficult.  And of course, the comfort zone, chicken.  Somehow we landed on Greek meatballs, made with lamb, onion, feta and Kalamata olives, despite the fact that neither of us have cooked lamb before.  Hopefully this goes well, otherwise all we’ll have is a rockin’ Macedonian salad and tzatziki with pita.  I am remaining optimistic though; Jon and I surprise ourselves in the kitchen sometimes, so I’m confident in our ability to follow a recipe.  Converting US standard measurements to metric may prove to be a little annoying and time consuming, but alas, we always did well in math.

I will be photo documenting everything, and we’ll start preparing everything tomorrow night.  I’m a little more excited than I should be, but I love to cook, and I haven’t been able to in over a month.  Wish me luck! :)