Argentina

Yesterday was Argentina Day, our first country in South America! 

Argentina is the 8th biggest country in the world by area, but lands somewhere in the 30's in population, so there's plenty of land to explore. Aconcagua in the Andes, is the tallest mountain outside of Asia. and is the tallest point in both the Western and Southern hemisphere. It also gets to claim the world's southern-most city, Ushuaia. 

The country in the world that consumes the most beef, you'd think they'd be among the chubbier of peoples, but thanks to activities like soccer (the boys youtubed the 'hand of god'/one of the greatest goals in soccer history), pato (like a polo-basketball combo! It's amazing!), and all the tango dancing (we listened to tango music at dinner!), they actually stay pretty healthy. 

Other fun facts:

If you're into Dinosaurs, Argentina is the place to be. The oldest known dinos roamed the earth in present day Argentina, and in 2014, paleontologists announced the discovery of the world's largest dinosaur ever found (roughly the same size as a jumbo jet!) 

Oh, and you don't say 'cheese' when smiling for a picture in Argentina. You say 'whiskey!' 

The boys all made their postcards, and tried to show off their new Spanish skills. We are doing DuoLingo as a family. Last week Peyton finished at the top of the leader board, and Asa was at the bottom. At the end of the week, the person in first gets a dollar for their jar, and the person in last has to watch an episode of Dora the Explorer to brush up their skills. Hayden and I are working on it together, so every night when I tuck him in, we've been brushing up on our skills. 

Dinner for Argentina was applesauce (they produce a lot of apples), potatoes with basil, and  carrots with pistachio-herb butter. Our main dish was Choripan con Chimichurri , a sausage sandwich of sorts popular with street vendors. 

We also had our first dessert with Argentina day: The Chocotorta. 

Dinner earned Five spoons up. 

Everyone really liked the whole dinner. Peyton had less onions on his sandwich, and it was his least favorite thing on his plate (we often do most favorite/least favorite thing on our plate), but he said it was his favorite meal so far. Everyone liked the desert, which surprised me because Peyton and Calib don't always like something too chocolate-y. The potatoes and carrots were also a hit, and we aren't a pistachio family. All around, it's a would make again. 

Being the 8th biggest country, it took a minute to scratch it off on our map. I can't imagine how long Russia, Canada, and the US are going to take. Holy geez, we might have to do those in shifts. 

Speaking of shifts, Hayden really wanted to color in Argentina, so Peyton told him he would do the outline to make sure it didn't get out of hand, and Hayden could color the rest of it in. 

We are (finally!) back to school work, and we've brought back the Waterstraut Weekly. Each week, the boys will be writing about their favorite country they've learned about recently. I wasn't thrilled with their efforts this week. Peyton and Hayden's were a little on the short side, and Calib's (while decent now), needed some heavy editing (which I made him do). But, all in all, for the first week back to work in awhile, they've done pretty well. The best article earned a dollar for their jar, and that went to Hayden, just because he did his in a timely manner. I'm hoping they get a little better each week. 

So, that's it for Argentina. Seven down, 186 to go! 

Next Up: Armenia 

Antigua & Barbuda

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 

Angola

Yesterday we learned about Angola, our second country in Africa. The country's name is dirived from the Kimbundu word N'gola, meaning king. 

Our Angola info sheet tells us the Capital is Luanda, they speak Portuguese, and the primary religion is Christianity (about 60% of the population).  There's no travel warnings for Angola, and while it isn't the safest place in the world, if you travel with someone who knows what they are doing, and use common sense, and keep an eye out for marked landmines, you should be alright. It's a country known for blood diamonds, civil war (which ended in 2002), and those landmines. But they also have beautiful beaches, and some awesome rock formations, like  Miradouro de Lua, which drops right off into the Atlantic. 

The people of Angola are friendly, and resilient. Luanda , an oil-rich city is the most expensive city in Africa as far as cost of living. Rent is high, and imported goods are expensive. But, most people in Angola still live in poverty. As a result, Angola is home to Africa's first 'ghost town', a state of the art city that the Chinese constructed for over 500,000 Angolans. But, nobody can afford to live there, and the entire city is basically empty. They also have their very own skipwreck beach, where there are more than 20 rusting and abandoned ships. 

Goods in Luanda are expensive. In the country, a box of 100 mangoes goes for $10, but in the city, one of them can go for $5. (Thus resulted in Calib's get rich scheme to buy a car in Angola and make a fortune off of mangoes). Anyway, we had mangoes for dinner, along with Angolan cabbage salad (we used kale instead, because we have a ton of it), and some Angolan potatoes. We used this recipe, and took out the cod. 

Our main dish was Muamba de Galinah, a chicken stew of sorts using red palm oil. 

Ok, so the salad was hit or miss, some of us liked it, some of us didn't. The potatoes were thumbs up all around, although some of us (me!) thought the egg was a little weird. And everyone but Calib was fine with the mangoes, but we've had those before, of course. 

The Maumba de Galinah was weird. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't really good. It was just plain, and unexciting. I ate it all, but I wouldn't be clamoring to have it again, and neither would the rest of the family. We had a discussion of what to give a 'spoon' to, and decided the mark should be 'do we want to have this meal again?' 

And it earned zero spoons up, as a whole. Everyone would have the potatoes again though. 

The boys made their postcards, we colored in our country, and scratched off the flag. 

Five down, 188 to go! 

Next Up: Antigua & Barbuda 

Andorra

Today was our first tiny country! Andorra isn't even the smallest country in Europe (I think it's 6th smallest or something), but it isn't even half the size of New York City. Calib was convinced I made it up. Oh, so like I said, it is in Europe. You can't really tell in the picture, but I decided it would be best to write the country in different colors of chalk, depending on which kid's place mat it's on. (In case you weren't aware, the kids have colors for everything to keep track of school stuff without having to label it all). So, Andorra was blue for Calib's Europe place mat. 

Andorra is in the Pyrenees Mountain range, which separates France and Spain. Basically there's a road into Andorra from France, and there's essential one road out of Andorra, heading to Spain. There's no airport, so basically you have to decide if you want to fly into Spain or France. The capital, Andorra La Vella is the only town in the whole country. It's basically a ski resort town, with some hot springs, and a big lake that's the result of a melted glacier. That's all Andorra really has to offer, unless you're a big shopper. This tiny country has over 2000 stores, that's 40 people for every one store. 

Mushrooms and Berry picking are popular in the mountains, so we had raspberries and blueberries with dinner, along with some mushrooms in the pasta. Wine is big, so the boys got grape juice. A popular side dish in Andorra is Trinxat, a potato kale and bacon mixture. Look, I've never met a potato I didn't like, and these weren't bad, but they certainly weren't my favorite potato ever. They might be down there with my least favorite. Tonight was a big carbohydrate heavy. We also had Pa Amb Tomaquet, basically some garlic bread with tomato, aka bruschetta. The main dish was a little trickier to find something Andorran. They mostly have Spanish and French cuisine (obviously, given their location- they don't really grow/farm anything, so they have to import everything). We decided on the French Chicken Francese. 

The whole thing was good, and I give it the spoon of approval. But, it wasn't my favorite. All in all, it's four spoons from us. Hayden was not thrilled with much of anything besides the grape juice and the bread. Peyton, shockingly enough gave it a spoon of approval. He liked everything but the trinxat (like me). Calib and Asa, meanwhile, ate everything. 

Postcards were good today, Peyton's was even two sided. We've been having the boys explain their postcards and why they drew what they did at dinner before we vote with the coins. 

A tricky little country, it wasn't exactly on either map, so we just put a dot of nailpolish, and scratched off the flag. 

There postcard area is filling up, we've got the Afghanistan, Albania, and Algeria postcards displayed nicely. 

Four down, 189 to go! 

Next Up: Angola 

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