Celebrating the 4th – Australian style


This post is part of the 31 Days of Writing for July. Click here for my previous posts or click here if you would like to join in.

Day 5: Tell us about your July 4th celebration.

So, obviously, it isn’t day 5. I was going to skip this prompt because, as an Australian, the 4th of July is just another day for me. For some reason though, this year I had two 4th of July/American themed celebrations. Considering it isn’t a day of much significance here that was a bit odd so I figured I’d tell you all about what I did and you can laugh at the stereotypes we have of Americans.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take too many pictures as I didn’t see much use for them – until now – and well, most of the food was deep fried into oblivion. I do wish I’d gotten a photo of the spread at work though, it was quite cute.

So, on Thursday afternoon at work I was telling one of my colleagues how I was going to a 4th of July party on Friday which had, what we consider, American foods. I wasn’t sure why we were doing it but one of my friends has a soft spot for all things American and was hosting the show. He had a full menu sorted for us and there were, seemingly, never ending alcoholic slushies. So, win win. My colleague kind of rolled his eyes and couldn’t work out why we were celebrating another country’s holiday, then 2hrs later my work was hosting a 4th of July afternoon drinks.. coincidence? Considering he arranges these things, I think not.

I was prepared then for endless eating of pizza, burgers and hot dogs.

And that is how the work events started, we could grab a drink and then swarm down on the food. We had mini hotdogs (with ketchup, American mustard – is American mustard, just called mustard in America? – and bacon.. mmm bacon), beef sliders and pepperoni pizza. All of them really well made and the rolls were delicious and surprisingly filling, I had a few and felt fine and then 15mins later thought I was going to explode.

After that I left work, and struggled to walk up to Jarrod’s work (so.. full..) where we were getting a lift out to the party.

We arrived at the party and were promptly handed drinks (our host is good like that) and started snacking on some chips.. probably a bad idea considering the plethora of food to come.

While we waited, we got to watch our chef for the night (sort of) preparing a bunch of things for us, starting off with jalapeño dip which scared me immensely, especially when he also started adding avocado and sour cream.. Funnily enough it tasted pretty mild and decent, all things considered. Meanwhile the slushies flowed, right into our bellies, mmm blue.

We then started on the cheese kransky’s, I’m not sure if this is an american thing or just because we wanted cheese kransky’s, either way. Delicious.

Then came the Frickles, I actually had no idea what a frickle was prior to the party, I sort of wish I didn’t know now. Although I like pickles, I do not like frickles, well not these ones anyway. I don’t even know what I didn’t like about them, just.. no.

Our Frickles looked and tasted like this, which is apparently a good thing
Our Frickles looked and tasted like this, which is apparently a good thing

One of the more interesting things of the night were the deep fried chicken wings. Normally you wouldn’t call a chicken wing interesting, but our host had accidentally used icing sugar instead of flour in his batter so they were quite sweet and unusual.

These were followed up by corn with a nice butter, ribs and more sliders with chipotle fries.. except the fries had paprika in them, which was a sore point for our chef. I barely got through the sliders, they were the best thing of the night too I was just so full by that point I couldn’t eat another thing.

All the while, we watched/listened to a flash back friday music video show (which I was surprisingly good at guessing/remembering the years the songs came out) while drinking, chatting, fighting for the couch (once you get the couch, you basically can’t move, otherwise someone else will steal it) and having a good time. As far as 4th of July is concerned, it was pretty decent.

So, tell me, how did we do in our many courses of American food? Was it sort of accurate, not at all or completely? What did we miss that you’d suggest?


3 responses to “Celebrating the 4th – Australian style”

  1. You did way more July 4th celebrating than me. Is mustard different outside of the US? Now I must research this. I’ve never seen or heard of a frickle. I must admit that I don’t eat really anything you ate for your American celebration. Perhaps I’m not American. Hmmm… 🙂 Sounds like you had a lot of fun!

  2. I didn’t do any of the traditional 4th of July stuff. It’s interesting to read about your 4th of July, eating American food. That’s a lot of food. I’ve never heard of frickles either, but I may have seen them before. I had thought they were cucumbers or zucchini, not pickled. I’m not a fan of pickles but I’ll eat cucumbers and zucchini.

  3. Frickles are delicious! It sounds like you had a great 4th. I’m from the SITS fest. I recently visited Australia which is what got me interested in your post.

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