Around the World in 12 Dishes: Spain

We’re in our final country for Europe for this trip of cooking around the world, Spain.  I was looking forward to Spain because I love the music and the drama of some of the Spanish culture, and I had a few fun ideas to do with the kids. Not to mention a few fun books I found to read.

First our:

Meal from Spain: Spanish Chicken in Sherry

Our meal is loosely based on Spanish Chicken in Sherry.

 

Ingredients: chicken cut up into pieces (I opted to get only chicken legs because those are popular here), olive oil, ham (slices), mushrooms, sherry, bay leaf, salt and pepper

{As a side note, my version did not turn out at all like their recipe, you’ll see why soon}

 

1.  Heat olive oil in pan, put chicken in batches and brown it. (this is a mommy step)

2.  While you are doing step 1, your kiddo can be slicing mushrooms.  I somehow didn’t have fresh ones, so we used jarred mushrooms.  She quite happily did this.

3.  Layer the chicken and mushrooms together in a oven ready pan (this is where I completely deviate from the original instructions).  While you’re at it, sprinkle some salt, pepper, and a few bay leaves in there.  Heat your oven to 400 F.

4.  Go to add the sherry you were sure was in your pantry, only to discover it’s not there.  Instead pour half a bottle of Italian dressing on the chicken mess.  Since, you’re already mucking with the recipe, throw in some chopped onion.  What the hey, why not?

5.  Use the tongs to randomly mash onions into place and mix up the “sauce.”  Then cook it for 20 minutes just like the recipe said.  Never mind you’re changing the recipe.

6.  Act surprised when you pull out a very raw chicken 20 minutes later.  Growl about how hungry you are and turn the temperature up.  That’ll make it cook faster, right?

7.  Meanwhile decide to have homemade potato chips with dinner.  Heat up the remainder of your oil and slice some super thin potatoes.  Start frying those up.

8.  While this is going on your kids will regularly wander into the kitchen announce they’re hungry and then proceed to rummage through the pantry, while you yell not to touch the pantry dinner is cooking.  They look at you with disgust.

9.  Finally your food is done, but you forgot to get a picture until you’d started eating, so the chicken has a bite out of it, and the potatoes are a jumbled mess.  Just be glad the food is done.

Oh, and it got mixed reviews from the kiddos.

Learning adventures with Spain

Since Spain is a huge topic to deal with and one of the first things that popped into my head was the castle in Spain inspired by the grill Saint Laurence was martyred on (thank you high school history teacher), I knew I needed to: 1. Narrow my topic, and 2.  Not teach my kids that.

So, I went to Homeschool Share and found their Spain lapbook and a lapbook on The Story of Ferdinand.  Perfect, we’ll focus on bullfighting!

 

First I headed to the library and checked out The Story of Ferdinand.  I own a copy of the book, but it’s been misplaced.  If you’re not familiar with it, Ferdinand is a gentle bull who is chosen to go into the bull ring, and then doesn’t fight.  It’s super duper cute, and a great story.

After reading it we put together our lapbooks and learned more about Spain.

About halfway through we took a break to try our own form of bull-fighting.

First we used our dog as a bull.  He did was somewhat cooperative.  But, not the best.

Then we played with one kiddo as the bull, and the other as the bullfighter.  The bull to win had to knock the bullfighter with his head 2 times.  The bullfighter to win had to knock the bull on the shoulder with his hand 3 times.  It seemed to be fairly balanced because we had both bull fighter and bull win.

Then we learned about the “Running of the Bulls,” and watched a few youtube videos.  Here’s our favorite one:

So, that’s our study of Spain, I am ridiculously late posting about it.  Next month (in less than 2 weeks), we’re posting about Kenya as we move to Africa.  I’ve got a huge stack of books to look through.

 

Adventures In Mommydom, Creative Family Fun, Domestic Goddesque, Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls,Juggling with Kids, Kid World Citizen, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Little Artists,Mermaids’ Makings, Montessori Tidbits, Mummymummymum and The Educators’ Spin On It. have come together to help you on your food journey and will each cook a dish with our children and post about it – to help inspire you to have a go! Then go out there, cook, blog, and join in the linky fun!