Corey writes:

First, a big "Thank You" for all the helpful suggestions on what to cook for our Indian friends yesterday.

A recap of the possible menu items: pizza, chocolate chip cookies, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes (and gravy), spaghetti, hamburgers, brats, potato salad, chili, BBQ chicken, green bean casserole, coleslaw, cornbread, cheese curds, hot tamales (sloppy joes to everyone not from Wisconsin), potato chips, baked beans, fried chicken, chicken noodle soup, chicken and dumplings, peanut butter cookies, hot dogs, onion rings, bread (or rice) pudding, apple pie, grilled cheese and tomato soup, peanut butter and jelly. Quite an impressive list, it was tough to choose! I wanted to combine them all into some kind of thisiswhyyourefat monstrosity, but Gina stopped me.

Some choices weren't possible because they were non-veg (or meat dishes to you non-Indian readers). Some of our guests are "pure veg", meaning they never eat meat or eggs, and some only eat meat on certain days of the week. As it happened, none of our guests wanted to eat meat on Sunday. Also, this means we get to keep our meat stash for some other time:

A story for another time, my friends...

Some choices were eliminated because we couldn't find the ingredients here in Koraput (No chocolate chips, boohoo!). And some would have been too difficult. Sorry, we're lazy. So, we finally settled on grilled cheese and grilled PB & J sandwiches, french fries w/ ketchup, vegetarian chili, and banana bread. The winning suggesters will be getting cash prizes by mail. The cash will be stolen en route.

So, yesterday I headed out at the crack of 10:00 a.m. (the shops don't open sooner) to buy all the supplies. I phoned our guests to make sure they were still coming. One dropped out as her sister is getting married on Friday (we're invited!) and she has to help prepare. I got back around 11:00 and we started cooking. Everything went swell, and our guests arrived right on time. They brought some Indian sweets to add to the mix.



What a spread! Our friends brought their young son with them, and he loved the fries. (Universal truth: all children love french fries). Interestingly, he thought the chili was too spicy. Hah! Also, our friends got a big kick out of the fact that chili is called chili.