Made in America

Marisa, Melanie, and I had been planning a 4th of July party for our buddies and the other interns for approximately two weeks. Melanie's dad brought a large bag of goodies from the US over with him for our party. It was jam packed with various decorations from window stickers and streamers to table cloths, plates, and napkins. There were buttons, glow sticks, bead necklaces, and a bunch of yummy candy all made in the USA. There were little American flags, stars and stripes visors, and other crazy gadgets and gizmos. It basically looked like the whole 4th of July party isle had been bought out at Party City. The three of us wanted to have an American celebration where we could teach the interns and buddies a little bit about where we come from while having some good food and fun! Each and every one of them has taught us so much, and we really wanted to do something nice for them to say thank you. After clearing it with our guest house to have visitors and getting permission to use the kitchen we began making party plans.

I started making the play list while we were at the Leela pool (see http://workhardplayhardsequoiainindiauop.blogspot.in/2013/07/old-delhi-jama-masjd-and-red-fort.html) The playlist consisted of over 3 hours of music all featuring classic songs about America. I even put a few Schoolhouse Rock tunes on there! I was feeling some serious America pride as I listened to all of these great patriotic songs. Being away from home makes definitely makes you appreciate what you have so much more.

The Tuesday before, the three of us went to Spencer's to get the supplies. Our entire menu was vegetarian because most of our Indian friends are vegetarian. We spent about two and a half hours running around the store trying to find the supplies for the following menu:

Veggie Burgers
Potato Salad
Pasta Salad
Deviled Eggs
Corn on the Cob
Baked Beans
American Flag Cake
Brownies
Watermelon

It sounds like a simple enough menu, but not all the ingredients in these dishes are easy to find. Melanie's mom and dad were a huge help in making our party possible by giving us supplies and some extra rupees to put towards the cause. Cooking was an interesting adventure to say the least. We didn't have an oven, and the kitchen was just tiny in general. The three of us barely fit in there to make anything. The pots were extremely small so we had to make everything in batches. We had 24 people coming to this party! That's a TON of food! We spent 6 hours cooking the night before the party, and man was it entertaining. I've never cooked that much food in my life at one time before. Now I sort of know how my grandma feels at Christmas. Although she definitely has an advantage because she has an oven, and a much larger and air conditioned kitchen. Overall the meal was pretty labor intensive to prepare. We have 4.3 kg of potatoes alone just to give you an idea of the quantity of things we made. We weren't exactly cooking in the most ideal of circumstances or places. Making the cake and brownies was a pretty hilarious endeavor. We didn't have an oven, so I mixed cake batter and put scoops in crucibles and mugs while Marisa microwaved them into mini cakes. We made 20 individual cakes and nearly the same about of mini brownies in the microwave. Marisa even whipped up some homemade white butter cream frosting to top them off with! We put a blue grape and a red apple slice on the mini cakes to make them look like tiny American flags. When the brownies came out of the cups/crucibles, unlike the cakes, they did NOT stay together well. We ended up cooking all the brownie mix and smooshing the cooked brownie onto a tray to create a smooshed together large brownie. It looked really, really sad but still tasted good, so that's all that mattered.

Melanie = peeler

Marisa = cook and Sequoia = washer/chopper

After cooking allllllllll night of course we realized there were a bunch of other things we needed to get so after work and our visit to the Sanskriti Foundation (see http://workhardplayhardsequoiainindiauop.blogspot.in/2013/07/a-little-slice-of-heaven-among-concrete.html) Melanie and I ran back to Spencer's to grab some more supplies. We spent another 3.5 hours cooking and decorating downstairs before people showed up for the party. With only 10 minutes to go before guests started to arrive, I realized I had no idea what i was going to wear. I didn't have anything obviously patriotic with me, so I ended up wearing white leggings with red sport shorts over top and a blue button up top that I wear to work. I looked absolutely ridiculous. I had on my stripes visor and pined American flags in my hair. I think I ended up looking pretty patriotic. Pallavi (a women who works in Marisa's office at the HITC site-HITC is the other UOP office here in Gurgaon. It is a large research facility with pilot plants similar to the ones at headquarters in Des Plaines) kept telling me how I looked the most independent in my clothing choices :p




The party was so much fun. Everyone loved the food which I think was my biggest worry. The other interns always joke about how American food tastes like grass because there are no spices. To a lot of Indians I have met, if the food isn't spicy then it isn't any good. No one claimed any of it was bad though! Everyone really seemed to have a good time. We had a total of 22 guests all comprised for UOP interns and the UOP intern buddies. We even played a trivia game where we divided everyone into two teams. Hilariously enough, the two offices ended up squaring off against one another in a battle of American history, government, geography, and pop culture knowledge. I thought some of the questions might be hard for them to answer but there wasn't a single question that both of the teams got wrong. One if not both of the teams always ended up getting a question correct.

You can see the cakes in the bottom of this picture!

Some DLF workers! Swapnika, my buddy Ranoo, and Riki!

Pallavi sure loves to eat!

Surya being ironic and wearing a Canada shirt to the party...

Much better! Sporting some American earrings. Good work Amit!

DLF intern friends! =)

Crashing every picture :p

Some HITC folks!

After the party the three of us cleaned up everything. The whole week had been utterly exhausting, but well worth it. It was awesome to get everyone together for some good food and fun after work. Though I don't intend to throw a party that huge any time in the near future, I was really glad we did it. When everything was finally cleaned at around midnight the three of us realized that we hadn't even begun packing for Mumbai, and we were leaving the next day straight from work in order to get to the airport on time. It was a long, long night. Tip for next time you ever plan a party where you plan to cook for your Indian friends: Cut the number of attendees in half and then make food for that many people :p We had a RIDICULOUS amount left over!!

Clean up crew!

The next blog post will talk about all the lovely adventures we had in Mumbai!

Love,

Sequoia