Serbia Unit

My freshman history teacher was fascinated with the dissolution of Yugoslavia and was fond of saying if another world war started it would start in the Balkans. I can see why she would say that, at the time it certainly looked that way. Thankfully it did not explode into another world war, the reality of what happened was bad enough. All of that whirls around my mind as we went through our Serbia unit and our geography lessons. I sometimes wonder how others connect things.

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Serbia resources

Having zoomed through our last 10 or so European countries, we got to know the various guest stars in the Geography Now videos fairly well. I started to recognize them and look forward to guessing if someone would show up again in an episode.

I also like how the later letters of the alphabet regularly have people from the actual countries to tell us more about their country.

Serbia Recipe: kajmak spread and bread

I found a list of Serbian recipes and made kajmak recipe(a butter cheese spread), and then a Serbian bread recipe, to put it on. Then we added that as part of our snacks for Maze Runner.

Kajmak ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 1/2 cup feta cheese crumbles
• 1/2 cup sour cream

Just go ahead and mix all of that together, and this recipe is done.

Serbian bread recipe ingredients

• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 package active dry yeast (1 1/4 teaspoons if you buy jars)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 5 cups flour
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 large egg (lightly beaten)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Now the more complicated recipe: making Serbian bread

1. Scald the milk, which means heat it until it’s just about to boil and then take it off the heat. Then add the butter, and let it cool down to lukewarm (a nice warm shower temperature). Add the yeast and sugar and stir until dissolved
2. Put 5 cups of flour in your mixer, then add the milk mixture, sour cream, oil, egg, and salt. Mix well.
3. Switch to the dough hook and knead the dough until it’s nice and smooth and comes away from the sides. My mixer has a tendency to walk, so I kind of lean on it so it stays in place.
4. Let it rise until about double. My dough never really completely rose that much.
5. Heat oven to 350 degrees, and form into a loaf. Traditionally it’s a circular loaf, but I like a longer thinner loaf.

We used this with our Maze Runner book and a movie night, and no one was super thrilled with the bread.

Serbia Unit: notebooking pages

While there was quite a lot of information in the video, I didn’t write down tons of interesting facts. Our notebooking pages weren’t too exciting.

The two big things that stood out to me were the Skull Tower and that Serbian weddings last for days. That last fact reminded me of what I’ve heard Jewish weddings were like in first century AD.

More geography lessons (and a bit of history)

• Slovenia Unit
• Wyoming booklist
• New Mexico booklist
• California Unit
• Shaduf lesson

Serbia picture used under Creative Commons license