We were off yesterday for some football watching and some friend visiting, but on Friday we had Antigua & Barbuda day. Now, don't be confused, that is just ONE country, but two islands. It was also our first country in North America!
Of the two, Antigua is the bigger island. It's where you'll find the capital city of Saint John's,and the famous Nelson's Dockyard (an 18th century British naval base named for Admiral Nelson who lived at the navel base for a few years in the 1700's and still home to some yachting and sailing events). Antigua is visited by more tourists (including Oprah!); Barbuda is the lesser visited of the two islands. It's harder to get to (you'll need a boat).
Like any island country, this place is all about the beaches. They claim to have 365 of them, one for every day of the year. Being out there in the Caribbean, they also have 127 documented shipwrecks laying off their shores, which makes for some great fishy homes, and good diving opportunities.
Other fun Antigua & Barbuda facts:
They have these Man-O-War birds that cannot walk or swim. They survive solely on stealing fish from other birds, or scooping them right out of the water.
On Barbuda, pretty much everyone (which is only about 1600 people) can trace their heritage back to the 1600's, and as a result there's only about half a dozen different last names on the island.
The highest point on the islands was called Boggy Peak until 2009, when it was renamed to Mount Obama on August 4th. (My family knows why it was renamed on August 4th without even being told! That's Barack Obama's birthday!)
Two things I failed to note before, we've been listening to music from each country at dinner, and we've been filling our chalk board up with reminders of what we learned about with each country. This won't happen all of the time, but for now, it's helping reinforce (and keep straight) what we're learning about.
We had some good postcards for Antigua & Barbuda, and we've now been through enough countries that the boys are being selective for their 'four piece collection' of postcards, to be voted on later for some more money for their jars.
Dinner for Antigua & Barbuda was Porkchops with Banana and Bacon, along with our take on Ducana. Ducana is a local Antiguan specialty that locals love. You mix together sweet potatoes with coconut and spices and then steam in a banana leaf. If you clicked on the recipe, you know what we did was a little different, but same idea. We also had to change up the Antigua Black Pineapple recipe a little, since we don't have access to black pineapple from Antigua (a bummer, since it's supposed to be the world's sweetest kind of pineapple). But, Publix has some regular-old-normally-sweet pineapple, all cut up ready to go, so that's what we went with. On the islands, they usually have rice and salad with dinner, so we took a little help from Uncle Ben for the Caribbean rice, and mixed some greens with some Honey Lime dressing.
This was my favorite meal. But fruit and sweet potatoes is my thing. Remember how we discussed my love for potatoes, it goes for their sweet cousins as well, however I am alone in that- and as a result, we almost never ever have them. This countries project is a great way to sneak some of that in. They have to try it in the name of education!
The bacon and banana was actually delicious, even though I had my doubts. It totally worked. The rice and porkchops were pretty par for the course. But the salad with Asa's very own honey lime dressing, and the pineapple was on point.
At least for most of us. This meal earned four spoons up.
Peyton hated every last bit of it. Even the rice, and Peyton loves rice. And my gosh, his reaction to the bananas and bacon might take the cake for the biggest dinner fit thrown. Calib isn't far behind after his raisin rant for Afghanistan though. (Fun fact: there were raisins in our Ducana, but I gave Calib the one where you couldn't see any plainly on top, and I totally tricked him into at least taking a bite). For Peyton, it was his least favorite, even taking down the Angolan dinner. Nobody liked the sweet potatoes/ducana but me. (I ate like three of them) I was surprised at everyone's willingness to eat the pineapple.
There are some countries that just didn't make it on to my outline of the world map, so Antigua & Barbuda are just a couple of dots out in our kitchen table Caribbean Sea.
Six down, 187 to go!
Next Up: Argentina
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