World Cup Eating Challenge - Day 2 and 3: Mexico and Greece

It's funny to only be a few days into my challenge and already think about how it's changing. I've decided to completely throw out the rule that I should try to focus on winners for two reasons. First, it will making planning almost impossible. Yes, I can assume that a handful of teams will easily win their groups, but I'd like to be able to plan out more than just meals from those countries. Which brings me to the second point - this might actually be a really fun way to try out dishes from countries I'm not familiar with at all. I have no idea what they eat in Camaroon or Cote d'Ivore, but wouldn't it be fun to find out? I think the group round might be a good chance to try and experiment with fun new dishes. Let's carry on with how the last few days have gone though.

Day 2 - Team Mexico

Mexcian food is probably my favorite. I could eat it everyday and know how to make a variety of things so when it came time to figure out what I'd make for Mexico's first game, I obviously drew a blank. Luckily, a friend let me know that Whole Foods was having a sale on avocados. That place really is amazing. Somehow 5 avocados for $5 ended up costing me $40, but I guess that's just the mystery of Whole Foods. I decided that the avocados would make an amazing guacamole. My secret to amazing guacamole - instead of hand cutting the tomatoes, onions, and cilantro myself... I buy pre made pico de gallo and mix it in. Some may call this lazy, but I call it outsourcing.

I served the guacamole with plantain chips. I like these as a healthier option over regular chips. I get a lot of crap from people about these kinds of healthy choices. However, every time a friend or myself has brought these to a party, they always disappear way before the normal chips. Healthy options can and generally do taste better than the unhealthy stuff.

The whole thing was topped off with a shot of tequila. My friend Carter Raff is a distiller and for my birthday he gave me bottle number 1 of his new tequila so I knew what would be a perfect pairing with my snack and it was amazing.

Day 3 - Team Greece

The third day of the Cup coincided with a friend's wedding. Obviously dinner was out of my control and generally getting all dolled up for a fancy party can make it hard to plan out lunch too so I knew I had to figure out something for a breakfast dish. I thought about my options for the day and I didn't want to start out with a heavy English breakfast so I decided to look up Greek options figuring that might be a little heavier. I quickly came up with a Greek yogurt fruit bowl with honey and nuts with a side of olives.

I don't eat a lot of dairy outside of cheese so I never jumped on the Greek yogurt train, however, I know it's really popular with a ton of health benefits, and I was excited to try it out. I wasn't expecting yogurt to be bitter but the honey and fruit really worked well with it and it was delicious. I was also surprised at how stuffed I was after. I didn't think a bowl of fruit and yogurt would be so filling.

The olives are castelvetrano olives. I used to hate green olives but these are much milder and are easy to snack on without too much of the astringency that I dislike in most olives.

The wedding was really fun as well and Dan and I made sure to make full use of the photo booth so there was plenty of proof of how fancy we were! Congrats to JP and Jaya - everything was beautiful!

All in all this challenge has been really fun so far. Day 4 is in the oven and I picked some supplies for a couple of other meals this week. I've also been scouting out recipes so if you know any good ones send them over. I'm pretty stumped for the African countries, Switzerland, Iran, Australia, or really any suggestions at all.