Moldova Unit

I have to admit I somewhat get Moldova confused with a couple of fictional countries from books and comic books I’ve read. It does not help that it is similar to a couple of the countries in those books, and I think the books were modeled after Moldova, so that’s not helping. Either way our Moldova Unit had some unique things happening with it (primarily the recipe…). It made for a fun geography lesson to add to our Europe Unit.

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Moldova Unit Resources

I’m watching the Moldova Geography Now as I type this, it’s one of the shorter episodes, so I”ll probably finish it before I get through writing up the resources section.

• Britannica Kids– I didn’t know this was a site
• Country Report– super boring site
• 9 interesting facts– the only site that actually has a picture from the country, it’s the least-visited European country, even less than the micro-states

Okay, let’s talk YouTube videos:

Then we get a Flag Friday episode:

And finally, this was just uploaded last week, perfect timing since I finally got the recipe cooked. He visited one of the territorial anomalies of Moldova.

But wait, there’s more! History Matters has a fun short video on why Moldova exists, and I always like an excuse to share their videos.

Okay, I’m done randomly finding videos.

For now…

Moldova Unit recipe: Cheese Dumplings

I saw this cheese dumplings recipe and thought, I love the cheese bread we cooked from Brazil, so let’s give another recipe like that a try. It did not work. As a matter of fact, it just did not look good. I’m looking at the picture of theirs and I don’t know how it looks like that from the instructions.

This is what mine looks like, doesn’t that look unappetizing? Looking at the original recipe it looks appetizing, mine look sad.

Very sad.

Cheese dumplings ingredients

• 15 oz Ricotta cheese
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 4 tablespoons butter

Let me tell you how this went, and in the card I’ll write how it should have went

1. Whisk together 2 eggs, 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and the Ricotta. Only I somehow missed that it was 2 eggs and I accidentally added three eggs, and picked out what I hope was the equivalent of an egg. Things are already going poorly. I mixed this together with a hand mixer.
2. Use a spatula mix in 1 1/2 cups of flour until it forms a ball. However, I think because I had slightly more than 2 eggs, actually for all I know, it could be 2 1/2 eggs, I needed more flour for it to come away and form a ball.
3. Cover the counter or other flat surface with flour, then divide the dough into fourths and roll it out. Okay, that is not at all what I did, I covered that thing in flour, and then patted it more or less to the correct width of 1/2 inch thick. I was constantly adding more flour because it was just not forming the dough I saw on the original pictures.
4. Cut into small nuggets, like the size of a chicken nugget.
5. Bring a pot of water to boil and salt the water. Drop the dumplings in the water and let boil 1-2 minutes. When they are done, they will float at the top.
6. Remove from the pot and briefly rinse with cold water. Then brush on the butter.
7. She did not include in the recipe to saute the dumplings. The dumplings from the picture are clearly sauteed. Grumble grumble grumble.

Okay, let’s get this recipe card made. It will have much more official-sounding directions, I promise.

Moldovan Cheese Dumplings

Print

These Moldovan cheese dumplings are food.

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Total Time 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 15 oz Ricotta cheese
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 4 tablespoons butter

Instructions

1. On the stove start a pot of water boiling. Add 1-2 tablespoons of salt to the water.
2. Whisk together the eggs, sugar, salt, and Ricotta. Mix until it is thoroughly blended.
3. Use a spatula to mix in the flour. Mix only until combined and the dough is starting to form a ball.
4. Dust a flat clear surface with flour. Divide the dough into four pieces, and roll out 1/4 of the dough at a time until it is about 1/2 inch thick.
5. Cut the dough into small nuggets, approximately 1-1.5 inches wide and long.
6. Drop the dumplings in the water and let boil 1-2 minutes. When they are done, they will float at the top.
   
   Remove from the pot and briefly rinse with cold water. Then brush on the butter.
   
   She did not include in the recipe to saute the dumplings. The dumplings from the picture are clearly sauteed. Grumble grumble grumble.

Moldova Unit: notebooking pages

Okay, I’m gonna get this done quickly because I want to get to bed, and then I’ll come back and update it with a bit more.

We used the Europe notebooking pages.

And I don’t have super great fun facts:

• poorest country in Europe
• Tansitoria claims to be independent

Moldova Unit: animals to look up

I rewound the episode so I could copy the animals listed. So I skipped ahead to write these animals down, these would be great to fill out the animal report minibooks.

• brown bear
• European hare
• Minx
• Egret
• Auroch (national animal)
• White stork

Okay, now I’m off to bed.

More great lessons

I’m really briefly grabbing these:

• Third-grade homeschool picks
• How to make a Chinese dragon puppet
• Why you need a museum membership
• How to make a compass
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Photobank MD from Chisinau, Moldova, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons