Foreign Fridays

For the last three weeks, we've been eating our way around the world.

Perhaps I should explain. Before I had children, I had all sorts of lofty ideas about the kind of parent I was going to be: we were going to read only good children's literature (none of that popular crap--clearly, I hadn't met my Disney princess- and fairy-obsessed daughter at that point); we would go on regular outings to cultural centers; we would indulge our mutual curiosities about the world with weekly visits to the library, and so forth.

Then, enter reality. We do still read together--a lot--but the books are not always of my choosing (there's really no other way to account for all those Dora, Diego, Disney Princess, Bob the Builder, and etc. that we've read about over the last five years). And we do sometimes get out--we took the kids to an art exhibit over Christmas (granted, they were more interested in their cousins than in paintings). And we do go to the library on a regular basis, but mostly that involves me chasing the kids through the kids' section of the library and trying to discourage Andrew from picking books that I don't want to read. As far as actually *researching* a topic before we go to the library, well, that has yet to happen.

But this semester I resolved that I would do better. So, we decided that every Friday we would learn a little bit about a different country (starting with "A" and moving through the alphabet) and have a meal that day that reflects the local cuisine.

Two weeks ago, we started with "Australia" (in retrospect, I should have done Austria. Mmm. Weinerschnitzel. And kartoffel salat. And kraut. Maybe we'll have to start over again when we're done). We read some Australian-ized fairy tales in a book that Bubby brought back from Australia and read about an aborigine girl in a (somewhat dated) UNICEF book of children around the world. Evelyn didn't much care about the last story, but Andrew has been fascinated by the differences between his life and the life of the children we read about. For lunch that week (this was the night Dan and I skipped town, so dinner wasn't an option), I made potato dumplings and a traditional soldier's biscuit. The dumplings weren't bad, but I was the only one who ate them. And the cookies (I mean biscuits) fell apart (and tasted burnt). So that was a bit of a wash.

Last week, we learned about Brazil. We talked about the rain forests and read a little bit about a girl who comes from one of the Indian tribes in the rain forest--again, a lifestyle very different from ours. The little girl in question swam daily in the Amazon river (which contains piranhas and crocodiles, among other things. She maintained to the interviewer that she wasn't afraid of the animals, because they wouldn't hurt her. I'm not sure I would be so sanguine). We didn't have the ingredients for the traditional feijoada, a meat-heavy stew, so we went with "trooper's beans" which was actually pretty good.

Today I cheated a little bit. We talked about China, but our menu was definitely American style Chinese: we had an Asian salad (a family recipe) and sweet and sour chicken. Ironically enough, the salad was a bigger hit with my kids than the sweet and sour. Andrew seemed most struck by China's one-child policy. And in fact, so was I. I've been thinking of that all afternoon: much as I love Andrew, I can't imagine not having Evelyn in my life. I understand the Chinese government's reasoning (although I've heard they're relaxing the policy, since it's creating a problem for them currently as the population is rapidly aging and the young people carry an undue burden to support older generations), but it makes me profoundly grateful to live where I do.