International Dinners

A fellow NEURUS student, Erica, and I had been craving tacos from the moment we arrived in Groningen.  To satisfy our craving, we decided to make them ourselves and invite the other NEURUS students over to create an event out of it.  I enjoy cooking for other people, so I was really excited to finally have a reason to spend quality time in the kitchen.  We decided on carne asada and chicken tacos, Spanish rice, fresh pico de gallo and guacamole and of course, margaritas.  I had never made carne asada before and flank steak doesn't exist here, but the schnitzel cut meat turned out ok.  Erica's mom and grandma had sent her a care package that included seasoning packets that worked great for the chicken and Spanish rice.  The dull Winschoterdiep kitchen knives made the pico de gallo very time intensive, but worth it.  I have yet to find corn tortillas here, so we compromised with flour.  The most painful part of the night was hand squeezing dozens of limes and lemons for the margaritas (my poor little hands are still recovering). They turned out sooooo good - I was very proud of myself for that!  A few of the Dutch students had never had margaritas before, so I was glad they were tasty.  We couldn't find a pitcher anywhere, so we served the margs out of a teapot stolen from another kitchen.  All in all, the food was good, the drinks were great, and the company was wonderful.  It was a successful Taco Tuesday!

The spread!

Our fancy margarita pitcher!

The Groningen NEURUS students

Two days later, the people on my floor decided to have an international dinner.  The best part of living in an international student house is meeting people from around the world - and eating their food.  Originally I wanted to make American pancakes because the pancakes here are more like crepes.  But, I could not find baking soda or powder and I did not want to get the Magic Time brand pre-made mix from the American food section of the international aisle:

Isn't this awful?  This is what the Dutch think is American cuisine.  I mean I'll be honest, I love pretty much everything in this section, especially mac n cheese (bought three boxes - you can never have enough), but I really hope they don't think this is all we eat.  I digress.

Anyways, I couldn't make pancakes and I was still on a taco kick, so I made shredded chicken tacos.  Yes, I know tacos aren't "American."  Being from southern California, I eat Mexican food at least once a week, meaning tacos totally count as a "home" food for me - right?  Plus, a couple people seemed excited about tacos and just two nights prior I teased them by cooking tacos for other people.

In total, we had about 15 different dishes and everyone was completely stuffed.  Some standouts include gnocchi made by Floriana (Italian, of course) and a vegetable and bean dish made by Snara (South Africa).  The funniest contributions were frozen fish sticks from Sam and Bronte (New Zealand) and tons of wine from Eva (USA).  The meal was incredible and we are excited to do another international dinner again soon!

Meal Prep - delicious apple desert

Fish fingers!

International dinner group photo