Algeria

Asa is currently cooking tonight's dinner, so I figured I'd better get to last nights. (I should NOT be getting behind this soon). Although, big news: Yesterday I finished all of the 193 country cards. I still have to print them out, but I've officially done my research on every country. Yay! 

Yesterday was country #3: Algeria! It's the 10th biggest country in the world, but somewhere in the 30's in population ranking, mostly thanks to the Sahara Desert that covers something like 80% of the country. It's the biggest desert, after all. I mean, sort of. It's the biggest non-polar desert, and there's no Antarctica on my kitchen table, so we'll just go with the Sahara as the biggest. 

There is more to Algeria than just deserts. Although, who wouldn't love camping out in sand dunes and having camel races (they can reach speeds of 40 mph!)? Algeria also has some pretty awesome sights to be seen, including the Cashbah, North Africa's most intriguing medina (an old Arab or non-European quarter of a North African town). It might be neglected though, and is sort of threatening collapse, so you might want to visit that one ASAP. You can also check out cave drawing from the Phoenicians (shout out to you, Spaceship earth!), and a really impressive memorial commemorating Algeria's fight for independence against France. The Maquam Echahid features a flame that is never extinguished. 

There's a little about Algeria for you, fun fact: chickpea fritters are kind of yummy. We have three flags now! 

For dinner we had shakshuka, a popular dish in Africa. It was easy, and delicious. I highly recommend. (Asa has also been really excited about cooking this one). 

We had oranges, because citrus is pretty much the only fruit they have in Algeria (I only had Mandarin oranges on hand, so we made it work). Along with that we had chickpea fritters on top of spinach, and Loubia, a green bean mixture. 

It earned 4 spoons up. Peyton wasn't thrilled with the veggie based dinner. The rest of us really enjoyed it. I was skeptical of the tomatoes with the eggs, but it was seasoned really well, and pretty delicious. Just make sure you get egg and tomato in one bite, and it's on point. The Loubia was fine as far as greenbeans, and the chickpea fritters actually had more flavor than you'd think a patty made out of chickpeas would have. I'd totally eat this meal again. 

We colored in our third country, the nailpolish seems to be working well. 

And we scratched off Algeria and it's flag. 

3 down, 190 to go!

Next up: Andorra