Dinner cooked by Engineers

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June 8th 2010

Published: June 8th 2010

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No Knee Mcgee

Teresa's!

Not sure why the sign is covered up.

So on Sunday we cooked dinner for the Chinese students working with us on our mechanical engineering project. We talked to Teresa, the owner of the restaurant "Teresa's" (go figure) and she said we could use her kitchen as long we bought our own ingredients and everyone who came bought drinks from her at half price. Here is the menu:

Appetizer:
Chicken Caesar Salad
Main Course:
Dragon's Breath Chili
Sweet Cornbread
Macaroni and Cheese
Dessert:
Grilled Cinnamon Pineapple

Cooking a western dinner was actually incredibly hard to do, because it was very difficult to find western ingredients in China. This is due to a couple different factors: 1) all the products are in chinese 2) China doesn't have even have many western foods, and there is very little cheese/milk 3) we can't ask anyone where anything is because our Chinese isn't good enough. Despite all of these factors against us, we went to 3 different supermarkets and got enough ingredients to make the dinner, even if they weren't the ideal ingredients. We went to Carrefour (french), Wal-Mart, and Trust-Mart. The Mac and Cheese was undoubtedly the most expensive dish because the cheese we bought was really expensive. We were

John

He said it felt good to be behind a restaurant counter again.

hoping we could find some easy mac, but we were out of luck. I'll try to remember an ingredient list:

Salad:
8 Chicken Breasts, lots of lettuce, red onions, tomatoes, homemade croutons, Caesar dressing, parmesan cheese
Chili:
lots of different peppers, spaghetti sauce, ground beef, ground sausage, ground chuck, kidney beans, pinto beans, cumin powder, tomato paste, chicken broth, onions, garlic, beer, too many to remember
Cornbread:
milk, cornmeal, sugar, butter, oil, baking soda, flour, salt, egg
Mac and Cheese:
flour, milk, cheese, noodles, butter
Pineapple:
pineapple, brown sugar, ground cinnamon, melted butter

The biggest mistake of the night came in making my first batch of cornbread. We thought we had bought sugar from wal-mart, but it ended up being powdered chicken flavoring. Although it wasn't sweet, it actually wasn't that bad. John ended crumbling some of it up into his chili. Luckily, Teresa had plenty of sugar that we ended up using in our cornbread. I also failed miserably at making the cheese sauce and john turned what looked like scrambled eggs into a creamy, cheesy, yellow sauce. The Chinese students really enjoyed the meal and said that the dishes were delicious (they like using that

Teresa!

None of this dinner would've been possible without her help. We also cooked for her and she really enjoyed the food.

word). Deborah and Larry Brown, teachers with the management group, happened to come to Teresa's that night and we gave them what leftovers we had. Teresa wanted the recipe for the cornbread, chili, and pineapple. Its a relatively new shop so the menu changes everyday. After 6 hours of cooking, endless hours of preparation, and a pretty good amount of money, our dinner was finished and was a big success. Tan set up an American soundtrack that played in the background during the meal.

The most difficult thing about cooking at Teresa's was the limited space. We ended up cooking chili, boiling macaroni, and cooking a cheese sauce all on one available burner. Everything just barely turned out the way it was supposed to, but it was without a doubt a success. The Chinese students brought us gifts from their university and gave them to us about halfway through the dinner. It was a great multi-cultural experience and I think it brought everyone a little closer together. Dr. Z was also really impressed by the dinner and ate way more than his fair share of cornbread. John and I did most of the cooking and we definitely slept well