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!