My American Meal!

This Saturday, I finally got around to cooking some American food for my host family! I was extremely pumped to show off my (non-existant) cooking skills, so for my menu I chose the simplest, yummiest grub I could imagine. I settled on an old standby: fried chicken with a side of potato salad - and apple pie for dessert. By old standby, I mean that this is a meal that I:

1. LOVE with no boundaries!
2. and have never cooked before in my entire life

Of course, it was a bit nerve racking to cook for my family, for 3 main reasons.

1. Have I mentioned that I am an awful chef? I once liquidised brownies on accident, so I was terrified that I would a) Forever scar the Girard's palates b) Burn the house down or c) both. Luckily, none of these horrific events came to pass, but I was definitely on my guard
2. Odile and Jean-Yves are both amazing cooks, so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to live up to their expectations
3. Saturday was a special day; Odile had just gotten back from a short foray to Prague, and Jean-Yves was leaving that night for Africa (he'll be gone for three weeks! Ahh!), so I was anxious not to spoil a family meal at such a time

Thankfully, the Girards were their regular sweetie-pie selves, and that gave me a gargantuan confidence boost. With them encouraging me left and right I soon forgot all about my cooking insecurities and just cooked!

Here's a walk-through of my cooking adventure:

I started by making what any sane human being would commence with: dessert! Do you notice the plate with the humungous gob of butter? Yeah, that's what happened when I noticed (a bit late) that I had added twice the amount of butter that the pie crust called for. Despite desperate attempts to extricate half of the butter mass, I was very uncertain about how much butter remained in the dough.

Then I started on the fried chicken! While this foray was (for the most part) uneventful, I am still fairly unsure if I added the right amount of beer to the batter. I couldn't quite remember if I needed to add more than, less than, or exactly 3/4 of a cup of warm and flat beer. In the end I was just eyeballing it... Yay for inexperienced cooks!

 Vegetarians, run!

Even I, a hard core carnivore (okay, omnivore), was sufficiently grossed out by the 6 chicken breasts that I had to cut up for the fried chicken. After I got them out of the package, everything went smoothly, but for the first minute or so I just sat staring at the limp, moist, lifeless chicken carcasses (sorry about the graphic image guys, I just want you to know exactly how I felt!) I was just like:

  

...and then I was like:

...and then finally like:

 I'm kidding! That only happened after the chicken was fried.

Yes. Yes I was terrified I would burn my face off in a gastly home-frying catastrophe. Luckily, with paranoia comes safety.

After the chicken was fried I made the potato salad, which was pretty uneventful as it contained neither dead animals, scalding liquids nor butter! What was cool was that Jean-Yves made the mayonnaise for the dressing. After seeing what fresh mayonnaise looks like, I'm pretty dubious of that mystery gel they sell at the supermarket.

Finally, it was time to bake the pie! (I'm not going to lie, I enlisted Odile to help me with the apple peeling. I haven't quite mastered the art of manual fruit peelage!) When we threw the pie into the oven, I was so frightened that the crust would melt! That's how much butter it contained.

 The Final Products:

A little less breaded than I would have liked, but the fried chicken was overall smashing!

The potato salad was also accepted with open arms!

Not surprisingly, the dessert was the real show-stopper! Despite my fears of over-butterage, the crust turned out spectacular (Odile even commented on it's expertise! I obviously cited my mother's recipe as the cause for it's deliciousness.) and the appley-cinnamony inside was on the perfect intensity of sweetness. Not to pat my own back but... I was pretty proud!

All in all, Saturday's lunch was a knockout! My meal went fabulously (despite the Godzilla-like mess and the fact that we ate at 2:00) and the Girards were ecstatic at the idea of eating an authentic American meal. To tell the truth, the best part of the meal was getting to see their excitement to get a taste (haha) of my culture. As an exchange student, I'm so focused on experiencing French culture that sometimes I forget that the people around me want a piece of American culture too. It's so strange to think of American culture as 'foreign' or 'exotic' because for me it's normal, all-inclusive and sometimes bland. For me, America is about as exotic as Vanilla ice cream, but for everyone here, America is equivalent to a Tutti-Frutti Double Blast Pineapple Creamsicle! And as a representative of the Tutti-Frutti Double Blast Pineapple Creamsicle, I have to not only take in my surroundings, but also share with others what I left back home. And though it might feel weird to portray what I see as a Vanilla ice cream cone as a Tutti-Frutti Double Blast Pineapple Creamsicle, it's a pleasurable experience to see my country through other peoples eyes. It doesn't even matter whether Tutti-Frutti Double Blast Pineapple Creamsicle blows their minds, terrorizes their taste buds or even just leaves them unimpressed because, as someone who has eaten this flavor all her life, it's great to see others try it for the first time.