Saturday, December 31, 2011

First Things First

This year, my family is going "Around the World in 52 Meals"; in other words, once a week we'll be preparing (or, in some instances, purchasing) meals from countries around the world. Today, we sat down and made a list of countries to choose from--think we've got a pretty good list!

 Here it is all typed out:
North America
USA
Canada
Mexico
Caribbean
Polynesia
Jamaica
Australia
Outback
Mainland
Oceania
South America
Nicaragua
Argentina
Brazil
Suriname/Guyana
Cuba
Venezuela
Colombia
Panama
Bolivia
Chile
Africa
South Africa
Morocco
Egypt
Senegal
Tanzania
Congo
Zimbabwe
Swaziland
Nigeria
Sudan
Chad
Asia
Turkey
Russia
Nepal
Hong Kong
Philippines
Japan
China
Thailand
India
Israel
Saudi Arabia
Afghanistan
Europe
Ireland
Scotland
France
England
Switzerland
Germany
Greece
Italy
Spain
Czech Republic/Slovakia
So how it'll work is that we'll draw a country name from the hat (well, actually a plastic container) at the beginning of the week and after drawing, I (or in some cases someone else in the family) will find a recipe from the country and prepare it later on in the week. If we happen to draw countries from the same continent two weeks in a row, we'll put it back and draw another. There'll be a few exceptions to drawing names (like making Scottish food like vegetarian haggis on Robbie Burns Day), but most weeks we'll stick to the plan. I'll post photos of the food and a link to the recipe and let you know what we thought about that country's cuisine. While it's true that you cannot judge a country's cuisine by one dish, I firmly believe that this project will give us more cultural insight as well as stretch our palettes!

As much as I'd like to claim the idea as my own, I suggested we adopt the idea from a contestant on Jeopardy some time a few months ago. While the contestant is now going across the country by cooking foods from state-to-state, I think it will be quite enough of an adventure with the list we have.


I look forward to hearing your input and would love to see suggestions for recipes if you already have favorites from our list of countries! (And also, give me a heads up if you want to be a part of any of these meals--maybe we can make a party of it!)


Here's to a fun and exciting trip!