20th Meet!

Hostess: Nishal

What an exchange!

We met this past Sunday at Nishal’s house. She made the most amazing mango drink. I am not a big drink drinker (yes, I just said that). I like Wine, Water, and Vodka. But this mango drink, I can see myself drinking this in the cold and dreary Connecticut (okay it’s not cold and dreary all the time, but work with me people) while imagining myself on a tropical island. I close my eyes and I am back in Jamaica. White sand. Cool breeze. Turquoise water.  My beach chair is halfway pulled in the ocean; the sun is beating down on me and small fishes are swimming right around me. I have my favorite book in one hand and in the other Nishal’s mango drink. Everything is alright. It was so cold and refreshing. She served the drink with some mango pieces in it. I could go for one right about now. 

We decided to prep everything and eat everything at once (versus eating one item and then going and prepping and then eating). Jalpa served us this really cool and refreshing salad. It had less than five ingredients and she made it fun with the coconut shells she served it in. Parul and I made burgers – Parul’s  was a quinoa burger that looked like a oatmeal cookie and tasted like deliciousness and mine a chicken burger that tasted like curry burger… because.. Well... it was. We ended the food part of our exchange with a scrumptious coconut crème parfait that Vaishali whipped together. I couldn’t stop talking about it for two days. It was that good. 

With a group of six and growing (with babies, not new members) we realized that we had to set some ground rules. This exchange cannot and will not be successful if we are on different pages about it. Big take aways were: this a “me” time (so no kids or husbands unless invited), always communicate with the entire group, act not react, when the date/time is set it should become a priority for all (no canceling if something else comes up), and no canceling unless a dire emergency comes up. We understand that this is for fun and adding rules to things like this takes away some of the fun, but we also understand and respect each others time. This will just make it even that much better. *winky face*