Afghanistan Unit

I think like many Americans in the last 20 years, most of my knowledge of the country comes from the “War on Terror,” or it currently being called the Afghani War? If I had a time machine it would be fascinating to see how these past 20 years are talked of. But that has nothing to do with our Afghanistan Unit, so back to our geography lesson.

Update, so I wrote this in (checks original publish date) June. It is now two months later, I’m updating this post on August 19 with my new blog logos and this is out of date. I’m not going to update the material on government or anything like that yet, because things are still in motion, but I’m acknowledging things have changed. I just don’t know how it will all shake out.

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Afghanistan Resources

I was shocked our library had no books, but we had a blast with the Geography Now video. Especially since that is the very fist video from the channel, so it’s a bit different in quality.

Afghanistan recipe: Elephant’s Ears

I’ve actually made elephant ears before using a different recipe, and wasn’t going to make this, but the original recipe I picked out was so bad I literally threw the dough away when it did not roll out because the ingredients in the “recipe” would not mix to make a proper dough. I’ve now made enough doughs to be able to say for sure it wouldn’t have worked, instead it created something rather like moon sand…

So, elephant ears recipe.

Elephant ears ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 teaspoons oil
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• powdered sugar with about 1-2 teaspoons of cardamom mixed in
• oil for deep frying

Make your elephant ears

1. Beat eggs until light and frothy (maybe this is what I did wrong, and I didn’t beat the eggs enough?). Then add in sugar and salt.
2. Stir in milk and oil.
3. Slowly add the flour and cardamom, mixing it in, then start kneading it. Adding extra flour if you need.
4. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until its all smooth and glossy. Then cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest for 2 hours.
5. Take a small piece of dough about the size of a walnut and roll it out and form it to look kind of like an elephant ear.
6. While you roll out the dough, start heating oil in the pan, and once the oil is hot, start cooking the dough. Fry the dough until golden brown, flipping about part of the way through.
7. Once they’re done cooking drain them on paper towels to get rid of excess oil, and sprinkle powdered sugar with cardamom on it.

Afghani Elephant Ear Recipe

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Try out this fried Afghanistan dessert

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes

Additional Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 teaspoons oil
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
• oil for frying
• 1 cup powdered sugar mixed with 2 teaspoons cardamom

Instructions

1. Beat eggs until frothy, then add the sugar and salt.
2. Stir in the milk and oil.
3. Slowly mix in the flour and cardamom. Keep mixing it for another couple of minutes.
4. Empty the dough onto a floured surface and knead it for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and glossy. Cover and let the dough rest 2 hours.
5. Take a piece of dough about the size of a walnut and roll it out flat, shaping it to look like an elephant ear.
6. While you are rolling out dough, start heating the oil until it sizzles.
7. Drop in the dough to fry, flip it over after a couple of minutes, and take it out when it is golden brown.
8. Put fried elephant ears on a plate of paper towels to let it drain.
9. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the cooked elephant ears and serve.

Afghanistan Notebooking pages

With no books, we only had the Geography Now video, and one of our fun facts was the last Jew in Afghanistan, and after we studied the country, I happened upon this article on the man, and it just made the story even better.

One thing I like about the earlier Geography Now videos, he includes information about the flag in them. Later videos got so long, he turned that into a completely different video. It’s interesting to me how often red in a flag means the blood of the martyrs or a similar idea.

More fun lessons

• Europe Geography lessons Unit
• Over 200 books made into a movie!
• How the Catapult changed history

“Kajaki Reservoir in Afghanistan” by USACE HQ is marked with CC PDM 1.0