Cooking Around the World

As some of you know for the past couple of years I’ve been participating in Around the World in 12 Dishes, and I’ve rather fallen off the cart these past few months as I just lost enthusiasm and direction. But I love the idea of it, and I really miss it.  So, I’m rethinking it all, especially with this month’s Poppins Book Nook being all about kids in the kitchen.  Being me I started off our reboot asking the kids what they wanted to learn about countries and what countries they want to learn about for our geography lessons.

Basically the kids hate our country notebooking pages and all of the cutting we have to do.  They want to learn about the flags because those are fun.  They really miss the picture books we used to read.  Oh, and they sometimes like the meals, sometimes they don’t.

Oh, and here’s the country and state list they came up with: India, China, Italy, France, Iran, Mexico, Brazil, Wisconsin, Iowa, California, Washington DC, Kentucky, New York, and Colorado.  Yes, they are very random.

Armed with that information I went to the library and found about 20 books (I only slightly exaggerate).  And I’ve got some ideas for plans for cooking with kids.  Can you help me refine them?  What would you add in?

Cultural Cookbooks

First, I found some great cookbooks from around the world.

{Amazon links on this page are affiliate links}

• The Kids’ Multicultural Cookbook– of the books I found this was my favorite.  The recipes start at ridiculously simple (ox-eye eggs) and continue up to somewhat difficult (peanut butter soup).  The recipes are organized by continent, and each recipe has a fun fact about the country or how people living there would use that recipe.  Interspersed are sort of “around the world” parties that include a theme (ice cream party) and how to make it go “around the world.”  I’m looking forward to trying the cheese party.
• Christmas Foods (World of Recipes)– It’s almost Christmas time, and my mind is obviously on Christmas with all of my Christmas posts recently.  I like these recipes because of the big bright pictures, and the assumption kids will do real cooking with some help from parents.
• Festival Foods (World of Recipes)– These recipes cover all of the different holidays worldwide.  Some we celebrate here in the United States, for instance specific religious holidays (Lent, Rosh Hashanah, Diwali), but most are unique to their country (a rice harvest festival, for example).  This is in the same series as the Christmas recipes book.
• The United States Cookbook– I appreciated how this book includes not just a recipe, but also some information about the state (its capital, major cities, some of their symbols), which back when we were completing our 50 state study we were completing.  This book has me itching to start that back up again.
• The American Ethnic Cookbook For Students– This feels like a melding of the two concepts, world studies and United States studies.  It’s also quite clearly for older kids.  It takes the cultures and ethnicities that make up the United States and creates recipe from them and talks about how they were modified when they came to the United States.  Intriguing, but a little much for my kids.

Cooking Around the World websites

Future Ticia 2022 piping in, I’ve also found a few websites that are great to find country recipes.

• Taste of Home recipes are usually fairly decent
• Food Around the World sometimes asks for unusual ingredients, but if I can find the ingredients the recipes cook well
• A Year Cooking the World
• Global Table Adventure
• Eat the World

From cooking my goals are to learn about the people and the country

Here’s my thoughts on what I want (I’m linking to the books I got for India, because that’s what I checked out first, partially because we have friends about to visit):

• I’d love some kind of fairy tale unique to that country (Monkey: A Trickster Tale from India, I love trickster tales)
• Something about their religion ( Diwali , and Hinduism (This is My Faith))
• What does their flag look like (India (Countries))
• What is their traditional dress (Cultural Traditions in India (Cultural Traditions in My World))
• their money (anyone have any clue how I could get coins or paper dollars from other countries?)
• a little bit about their government (Grandfather Gandhi)
• daily life (Sacred River)

I’ll let you know how it goes.  

How cooking around the world went

Hey, this is Future Ticia 2022, updating this post almost 10 years later.

First, we went through our geography in fits and starts. In some countries, like our France unit, there were lots of books and all sorts of things to learn, and then some other countries, like Marshall Islands unit, there is practically nothing to find, so our geography units were very short.

I’ve also discovered it can be hard to find recipes for some countries, see above mentioned Marshall Islands where they may not have a distinct cultural food identity OR the ingredients are difficult to obtain.

In the meantime, any great suggestions that have worked for you?