Kosovo Unit geography 8th Europe

Kosovo Unit

I found even less on Kosovo than some of the microstates in Europe, and you know why? Apparently, it’s still an argument on whether or not it’s a country. Serbia still claims Kosovo as part of the country. That means all of my usual sources for finding a video on the country had no video. So our Kosovo unit is super abridged and necessitated going to Wikipedia for the majority of our information. That certainly made it a unique geography lesson.

Yikes, future Ticia 2022 who is finishing off this post, apparently years after I started writing it, and the post is almost completely finished, why didn’t I finish and publish this?

Kosovo Unit homeschool geography

(there is a very slim chance of affiliate links, maybe I’ll link to a measuring cup)

Our Kosovo Unit resources

Our usual go-to, Geography Now, didn’t have a video specifically for Kosovo, it’s a subsection of their Serbia video.

This goes back to the is Kosovo a country, because Serbia claims Kosovo is still part of their country. Kosovo says, “No crazy person, we’re our own country and deal with it.” 

So, we watched this video, with the kids complaining the whole time all about how this wasn’t answering any of their boxes to fill in. I said, “It filled in languages and population.” They did not think that was helpful.

I wanted to have them watch this one, but the kids were all in a mood and didn’t want to just watch it to learn more about this crazy mess. I really wanted to because this was all in the news when I was in high school, and my freshman history teacher was obsessed with this and convinced they would start another world war, just like World War 1, and it looked like she might be correct.

Kosovo Unit geography 8th Europe

 Then I did a report on genocide in college for a honors studies class and wrote about Slobodan Milosovich and his attempt to wipe out the minorities he didn’t like. Which 20 years later I really don’t remember much about it besides he literally said, “the final solution,” which fascinated my professor.

This comment from the video sums up my understanding of history there:

Anything: happens

Balkans: YOU HAVE PROVOKED A GANG WAR

Then I found this video, which I watched myself, but didn’t watch with the kids.

As you can tell, my interest in the topic far exceeded theirs. Their interest was how quickly can we fill in all the boxes in our notebooks, and did you find any weird books about the country?

They love to make fun of my books.

via GIPHY 

Teenagers. 

Kosovo Unit geography lesson

Finishing up the Kosovo unit with our Kosovo recipe

Sooooo…… I searched for a Kosovo recipe, and you know what I found?

Mostly recipes saying they were Serbian or Albanian, which having learned more about Kosovo made complete sense because the majority of the people there are Serbian or Albanian.

Then I found the national dish of Kosovo, and said, “NO WAY!” It looks amazing, but it’s 4 or 5 hours of literal hands-on time. You’re making a thin layer of dough, and then putting it in the broiler for a minute or two, then pulling it out and adding another layer, before putting it back in. Repeat this for 3 hours.

I found that version only after reading three posts describing how to cook it over a wood fire outside.

A WOOD FIRE!

Next, I found a few mentions of a lamb dish, but it’s hard as all get out to find lamb here, and it’s expensive to buy, so I kept searching, then I found a sweet bread recipe saying “mix the water and yeast and leave it until it starts to ferment.”

How long is that? I’ve never fermented yeast, and I have no clue how to do that. Is it 5 minutes? An hour? A day? I have no clue, so that recipe was ignored.

Finally I found this recipe:

Kosovo Pitalke bread recipe cooking around the world geography Europe side dish

Kosovo Pitalke bread

At which point I said, “Yes, a recipe I can cook!” I’ve been trying lots of bread recipes recently trying to find one I liked, so I thought I’d love this recipe.

And it was okay. It’s not really super flavorful. Let’s get going with this recipe. I’m going to retype the original recipe with my adjustments:

  • 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/4 cup warm water (the advice I’ve heard is make your water a little cooler than you would your shower)
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup water (I probably added 1/2 cup water, and that was too much, so in the recipe card I adjusted it down to 1/2 cup)
  • water in spray bottle- I didn’t use this part because I don’t have water in a spray bottle
  1. Heat pizza stone in your oven at 320 degrees.- I did this, but not sure how much of a difference it made.
  2. Mix the yeast, sugar, and warm water together.
  3. Then mix together the salt and flour. Add in the yeast mixture.
  4. Slowly add in the water. This is where I discovered how much they meant it with “you may not need all of the water.” I’d added maybe 1/3 cup of water, and had probably mixed it all in well, and I thought, “There is no way I’m leaving this much water, if so they wouldn’t have said measure 1 cup of water.” So I added about 1/2 cup total, and it was WAY too liquidy.
  5. I pulled the dough out of the bowl and tried to knead it, but honestly, it needed a heck ton more flour. I probably added at least another half to 3/4 cup more as I tried to knead the dough.
  6. Eventually, I’d kneaded it awhile, and it was still sticky, but I’d added so much extra flour, I thought I was messing up the integrity of the recipe. So I sprayed the bowl with pam and covered it with glad wrap.
  7. I split it into 4 pieces, more or less flattened it out into a nice-looking flatbread, and let it sit for another few minutes.
  8. Finally, I put the bread in the oven. The site said to cook for 7-10 minutes, and I did 10 minutes, thought it didn’t look golden brown, so I cooked it another 3 minutes, and it still only vaguely looked white with hints of getting golden brown, but I had to get it out because the rest of the food was ready.

In the end, it was okay. It wasn’t particularly flavorful, and if you want some bread without waiting a long time for it to rise, this could be good, but honestly, it wasn’t that great.

Yield: 4 flat breads

Kosovo Pitalke Bread

Kosovo Pitalke Bread

Kosovo Pitalke bread is a quick to make flatbread.

Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes 12 seconds
Additional Time 15 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes 12 seconds

Ingredients

  • 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup water

Instructions

  1. Heat pizza stone in the oven at 320 degrees
  2. Mix the yeast, sugar, and 1/4 cup warm water, set aside for a few minutes as you measure the rest.
  3. In a bowl mix together the flour and salt.
  4. Add in the yeast mixture, then gradually add the water until you make a soft dough (I used the full half cup and it was too much water, so you may need less water).
  5. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, until it’s nice and smooth.
  6. Oil the bowl the dough was in, and then let the dough stand for 10 minutes while covered. It should rise to approximately double its size.
  7. Divide the dough into 4 pieces and flatten with your hand. Let it rise for 10 more minutes.
  8. Take the pizza stone out and put the bread on it, then put it back in the oven.
  9. Cook for 12-15 minutes.

Notes

You should be able to comfortably put your hand in the warm water, any hotter and the yeast will not activate.

When I made this I discovered I’d added too much water and had to add significantly more flour.

I added to the original cooking time because the bread was not golden outside when I cooked it.

Our Kosovo Unit noteboking pages

To fill out our Europe notebooking pages for this country I headed over to Wikipedia and scrolled through it as the kids kept saying, “When are you going to tell me something?”

They were feeling their oats for sure.

kosovo notebooking pages

You’ll notice these pages are a bit empty. After a bit of digging around, I found wine as their resource, it’s one of the biggest items they produce, but that’s not really a resource as I tend to think about it.

All in all, while we didn’t learn too much about Kosovo together, it was an interesting unit.

Kosovo Unit

More geography lessons

Chiesa ortodossa ‘Saint Petka’ entro le mura del Kalemegdan a Belgrado (e una nota sullo scippo del Kosovo alla Serbia) / Saint Petka at the Kalemegdan, Belgrade (and some lines about the theft of Kosovo to Serbia)” by emilius da atlantide is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.


Comments

One response to “Kosovo Unit”

  1. Reading your reviews of Balkan countries made me think how religious strife (between Christians and Muslims in the Balkan region or between Catholics and Protestants further west) shaped political geography of Europe. We all thought that we moved past that in the 20th century, yet the wounds keep reopening more often than we would all like to see 🙁

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