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Growing up in the United States my knowledge of Cuba could be summed up in a few phrases or words: cigars, Fidel Castro, Cuban Missile Crisis. For most of those years I didn’t even know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, I just knew it was a thing that happened. My college roommate was a second-generation Cuban immigrant. Her parents actually came over for Cuba and they have very strong opinions on policies involving the country and words about Castro. That’s my background knowledge coming into our Cuba Unit for our geography lessons.
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Cuba Unit resources
Our library didn’t have quite as much on Cuba as I wanted it to. Much sadness. Only a very few books.
Funny fact, I watch the Geography Now videos again as I’m typing up these posts because it helps me remember information from the almost year earlier I learned about the country (or sometimes even longer, I’m going through my backlog of drafts and trying to clear it out).
Cuba is where Barb started having a separate video for Flag Friday, and so here is the second video with the Cuba flag.
Cuba booklist
Sadly most of our books were either generic “Learn more about Cuba,” or generic Latin America books (stories from several countries).
- All the Way to Havana– a sweet story following a young boy riding in his family’s old car around the island
- A mango in the hand: a story told through proverbs– This was a more organic way of teaching Spanish and local phrases than occurs in most picture books
- Cuba– the nice generic country information
- Let’s Look at Cuba– this is more concise so a better read aloud than the True Books
- Senor Cat’s romance and other favorite stories from Latin America– I have mixed feelings on books like this. On the one hand, it’s an easy way to get lots of stories from different cultures, on the other hand, each story doesn’t get as many illustrations.
Cuba unit recipe: Picadillo
I found this Picadillo (Cuban style). I’ve eaten at a few Cuban restaurants, and most of the more distinctive dishes would be hard for me to recreate without a much better idea of where to get more unique items.
Ingredients
- 1 onion minced
- 1 red bell pepper chopped
- 3 large cloves minced
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 8-ounce can of stewed tomatoes (I never found an 8 ounce can, so I used a 14.5 ounce can)
- 1/3 cup dry white wine (I’ve started keeping bottles of cooking wine in stock)
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste (I’ve also started freezing tablespoonfuls of tomato paste because there are a surprisingly large number of recipes that require just 1 tablespoon of tomato paste)
- 2 potatoes cut into cubes
- 1/4 cup raisins (which I didn’t include because I don’t like raisins)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped green olives
- 1 tablespoon olive brine
Directions
- Cook the onions, bell pepper, and garlic in a dutch oven (I’m coming to love my dutch oven) over medium heat until the onions are tender and starting to caramelize
- Add the spices and cook another minute or two
- Add the beef, tomatoes, wine, tomato paste, potatoes, and salt. Cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender.
- Remove the lid and add the olives, and cook until the liquid is gone with the lid off. Then add the olive brine.
Cuban Picadillo
This one pot dish is a great way to add a lot of flavor to your weekday meal when you have a bit more time to cook.
Ingredients
- 1 onion minced
- 1 red bell pepper chopped
- 3 large cloves minced
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 8-ounce can of stewed tomatoes
- 1/3 cup dry white wine
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 2 potatoes cut into cubes
- 1/4 cup raisins
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped green olives
- 1 tablespoon olive brine
Instructions
- Cook the onions, bell pepper, and garlic in a dutch oven (I’m coming to love my dutch oven) over medium heat until the onions are tender and starting to caramelize
- Add the spices and cook another minute or two
- Add the beef, tomatoes, wine, tomato paste, potatoes, and salt. Cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender.
- Remove the lid and add the olives, and cook until the liquid is gone with the lid off. Then add the olive brine.
Cuba Unit Notebooking pages
We filled out the North America notebooking pages.
- Guantanamo Bay- super controversial, but I hadn’t realized the history of how it came to be
- very strong coffee- the many comedy clips about this coffee made me laugh
- the largest island in the Caribbean (but not in North America, looking at you Greenland)
Let’s go with middle school
Last time I wrote a geography post I decided to go with elementary ideas, this time I’m going to go with middle school ideas.
- Utah Unit
- Princess Diaries book club
- Middle School Christmas mini-unit
- Runaway Scrape Fight lesson (Texas history)
- Age of Exploration Game
“Cuba” by szeke is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Comments
2 responses to “Cuba Unit”
Well, coming from the Soviet Union, I had a somewhat different view of Cuba 🙂 The recipe sounds great – I want to try it maybe next week. We love potatoes here!
I know people from all over the world, but not Cuba! So I would love to hear more about your roommate’s parents’ perspective. I do know people who’ve been there as tourists, but that’s very different.
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