New Project, New Culture (Oceane M)

Hi everyone! You may remember me from my former group, Backwards in High Heels, but a lot has changed since then. Our group broke up after the break-our prototype wasn’t up to par and we felt we should invest our time in making a product we truly believe could be used and benefited from. My previous group members, Amelia, Sophie and Sara all had their minds set on making a rack for our school’s yoga mats; while I felt this was a good idea, it’s a more engineering-based project and didn’t appeal to me much. I asked around to see what my other classmates were up to, and found that Anjali and Isha were planning on making an Indian cookbook. Now picturing me cooking Indian food may sound ridiculous: I’m not Indian and I don’t cook, but I thought of it as a great way to try something new, and learning to cook definitely wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Our group has been working at a great pace so far, and we’ve already got a decent base for our project. We are making an online cookbook through iAuthor, which can later be sold on iTunes. Since two of our members are vegetarians, we decided to make this a solely vegetarian cookbook. We divided our recipes into four regions of India: Northern Indian Cuisine, Eastern Indian Cuisine, Southern Indian Cuisine and Western Indian Cuisine. Each region has approximately four or five recipes, which we are adding as we make them ourselves. We have the outline of our cookbook below:

So far we have taken two trips to the Indian grocery store, and made three recipes and a chai tea. We spend our class time buying ingredients we need and cooking them at Anjali or Isha’s house. I must admit at first I didn’t think I would be much help, and I was teased for being the “white girl” of the group (even though I am a quarter Hispanic) but I’ve surprised myself with cooking skills I didn’t know I had. After we taste and appreciate our food, we bring any leftovers back to school and share them with other classmates and get their feedback. So far we’ve only received positive commentary, but we did get a word of advice on our paneer butter masala to add a little more salt.

Overall I’m thrilled I joined this group and I’m excited about our final product. We’re off to a great start and I’m confident that this cookbook will be a success.