African Open House

I'm still catching up on everything I wanted to blog about. Remember the May wedding I posted about? Well, a few weeks later we hosted an open house for Jenny and Jim and themed it with Ugandan food.

I had so much fun working on the theme because it gave me a chance to reminisce about my own years in Uganda. Nearly 70 people showed up and the evening was so full of fellowship and joy -- I couldn't have been happier! Thank you to all of you who came!

Going backwards around the food table: Alaina made these delicious banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. You can find the recipe here on The Cooks Next Door.

My neighbor made me a Cassava Cake since cassava is such a staple in Uganda. We also served Ugandan tea both hot and iced and the chai mix from Costco was used to make chai. We even had Ugandan coffee!!

We had tropical fruit salad with pineapple, mango, banana, papaya and lime zest. I love that combination!

I found banana leaves at the local international market and they looked so pretty lining the serving dishes.

Then we had greens. It seems that many of the typical Ugandan dishes start out with onions and tomatoes and then you either add greens, beans, or meat!

And after the greens come the beans:

Samosas are a Ugandan street food, an influence of the Indian population. Everyone loved these! I bought them frozen at the international store and one of my friends came and fried them all for me!

I love chapatis! They are a flatbread popular as another street food. They were easy to make from scratch. I rolled and rolled and rolled and Rachel spent a long time cooking them all for me.

Not a great picture, but just to document the ground nut sauce (peanuts) which was meant for dipping the grilled chicken into. Once again, it also included onions and tomatoes!

And lastly (but really firstly) there was grilled chicken on a stick. Another friend spent two hours grilling all the chicken for us!!

Many hands make light work and it's true with a party like this. So many people helped out, including Christina who came over for the last minute chaos!

No more parties on the horizon at the moment! It's a cool, rainy day here today -- kind of a treat!