
For years I have longed to try foods from different countries, to taste authentic foods and learn a bit of their culture or facts about each. I thought maybe each of us could take a month and plan the meal, researching the country and teaching the rest of us what they’d learned. With six of us in the family, we would only have to do two each a year. It was going to be great!
But it never happened. Life would get too busy and the distractions would overcome my desires for these meals. Many times I would talk about it, but it would never come to fruition.
That is until Covid-19 hit in March 2020. This virus snatched us out of our comfort zone and into chaos, stealing away our missions trips we had planned, our time with our friends, our freedoms. But what it also did was free up a lot of our time.
Living just outside of town has always kept us out of our house far more often than we would like, and not driving kids to youth or school saved a lot of time! Time that meant we could finally travel the world through dinner.
We began in March, choosing a different country every weekend and trying to make the food as authentic as we could in our limited resources and knowledge. We would make most things from scratch, including tortillas and naan bread, to try and experience as much as we could. Some countries were easier than others, with some taking a lot of prep time. Most things we were able to find, though cheese seems to often need substituting as we can’t find the specific variety listed.
For each country the kids look up three facts each to share, and after a few weeks, we began listening to traditional music of the country while we prepared the meal. We try and have a main and a dessert or drink, and a couple of times a salad. We also began to pray for the country as we said grace, for their safety and protection during this pandemic. We have now experienced over 20 countries. Most have been well received while a few have been unappreciated. There have definitely been a few hits that will be made again and again.
And so we invite you to join us as we continue our travels around the world, tasting the uniqueness that makes this life beautiful.
What a cool idea! I love learning about countries and different aspects of their culture. I would totally do this as a unit study type thing if I had kids to homeschool. Although frankly my husband is just as much of a geography nerd as I am, so he probably wouldn’t mind.
I would recommend the YouTube channel GeographyNow! He does a 10-20 minute overview video on every country in the world, in order alphabetically.
Thank you, I’m really enjoying it! I’ll take a look at that link, that’s a wonderful idea. Now we’ll have to challenge the kids to find facts that we won’t find in the video 🙂