El Salvador Unit

El Salvador has a lot of natural disasters. I say that because two of the facts that intrigued me was the large number of volcanoes AND the many hurricanes it has. It’s quite a lot for a country its size. It made for an interesting geography lesson as we studied this “small” country in North America.

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El Salvador Unit resources

Just under a quick search I found two books, so I looked to my interesting facts to see if I could get any more books:

• 55 El Salvado Facts
• National Geographic El Salvador

I did not.

Sadness.

So heading over to the Geography Now video:

and the Flag Friday video:

Adding just random bit of text because I wanted to have another picture, but it’s weird to have a picture right after a video, and I just had two videos in a row, and all of that stuff. Maybe I should say something about the El Salvador Unit because Google likes that.

I should not write while I am so insanely tired, but I haven’t written anything for two weeks because it’s been busy.

El Salvador unit recipe: Carne Asada

I decided to try this Carne Asada recipe, it looked yummy. I’m always a sucker for “Mexican food,” which here in Texas means anything from South of the Border that we appropriate into a strange amalgamation of Tex-Mex food. Carne Asada is a regular at many of the restaurants I love to eat at, so I was quite happy to attempt it.

Carne Asada Ingredients

• 2 limes juiced
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 jalapeno minced
• 1/4 cup oil
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 pounds of flank or skirt steak

Time to make Carne Asada!

1. In a gallon-size bag combine the lime juice, garlic, orange juice, salt, pepper, oil, jalapeno, and vinegar. Seal the bag and shake it up to mix it. Then add the flank steak and marinate it for 2 hours or overnight.
2. When ready to cook heat the grill to high heat. Cook on the grill for 7-10 minutes per side.
3. When cooked to the desired level of doneness, remove it from heat and allow it to rest for 10 minutes. Slice against the grain.
4. Serve on tortillas with fixings (hot sauce, cilantro, shredded cheese, lettuce, grilled onions, etc).

I was expecting to get lots of complaints because it was marinated in citrus, many people in my family firmly believe meat should not be marinated or touch citrus, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find out everyone actually liked it.

So, that can get added into our semi-regular recipe rotation.

Carne Asada

Print

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Additional Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 35 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 limes juiced
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 jalapeno minced
• 1/4 cup oil
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 pounds of flank or skirt steak

Instructions

1. In a gallon size bag combine the lime juice, garlic, orange juice, salt, pepper, oil, jalapeno, and vinegar. Seal the bag and shake it up to mix it. Then add the flank steak and marinate it for 2 hours or overnight.
2. When ready to cook heat the grill to a high heat. Cook on the grill for 7-10 minutes per side.
3. When cooked to desired level of doneness, remove from heat and allow it to rest for a 10 minutes. Slice against the grain.
4. Serve on tortillas with fixings (hot sauce, cilantro, shredded cheese, lettuce, grilled onions, etc).

El Salvador Unit: notebooking pages

We used the North America notebooking pages, and filled the information out between the videos and the webpages I linked to.

Not too surprisingly from my introduction, El Salvador has some interesting natural wonders and crazy stuff going on.

• It’s the smallest country in Central America
• They have so many hurricanes, which was written down in my notes as like hurricanes, I don’t know what I was thinking
• They have a village similar to Pompeii, Joya de Ceren, an entire village preserved by lava
• Almost every major city is near a volcano
• In Nejapa, they celebrate by throwing fireballs at each other
• Only Central American country without a Caribbean border
• Over 20 volcanoes in the country, a country of 8,124 square miles

So, that’s our El Salvador Unit, and now that I’ve finished writing it up, I really want to make that carne asada again. Though now that I’m thinking about it, it came out more like what I associate fajitas like than carne asada…

More learning fun

I’m going to pick a random cornucopia of ideas.

• Worst astronomy resource ever
• Writing skill: how to conduct an interview
• World War 1 Resources
• Napoleonic Wars
• To Kill a Mockingbird book club

“El Picacho (Volcán de San Salvador) El Salvador en HDR” by lexdjelectronic is licensed under CC BY 2.0.