This April, for our “Around the World in 12 Dishes” series, we are traveling to France! We were fortunate to visit France several times when we lived in London, and thoroughly enjoyed the fresh, local ingredients, phenomenal artisan cheese, and the delectable pastries. We decided to incorporate these elements into our evening by doing a French cheese taste test, enjoying a fresh salade nicoise, and finishing with by some coconut macaroons.
Kids can learn about France in the interactive NatGeo “People and Places” site, or about French culture at the Dino Lingo site. We read about the interesting places, explored the pictures, and watched the little video- I love how NatGeo caters to kids and piques their interest! The Dino Lingo site even had famous French people and inventions, along with popular French children’s books.
To celebrate French (local) cuisine, we looked no further than our own garden. We had loads of fresh greens that the kids picked, plus some fresh eggs and veggies from a farm that we support.
The Salade Niçoise originated in and was named after the well-known town of Nice in the Côte d’Azur- though now it is served throughout the French Riviera, Paris- and for that matter Europe and the rest of the world. Once we had our French cheese taste test (see this post), we followed this basic recipe and the kids helped to prepare the vegetables and peel the hard boiled eggs:
It was fun to have the kids plate the food, and enjoy the bright colors of the fresh vegetables.
Next we made some delicious rochers coco (literally “coconut rocks”)
by mixing together egg whites and shredded coconut. We found the recipe here.
- 3 cups or 8 ounces (225g) dried, unsweetened coconut flakes
- 3/4 cup (150g) sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 large egg whites
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract (optional)
Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Cover a baking tray with baking (parchment) paper. Mix together the coconut, sugar and salt, and then stir in the egg whites and vanilla. My kids stirred with their hands until it was all wet, and then attempted to roll the mixture into little balls/mounds.
After the kids made little coconut mounds, we baked them for 12 minutes (until slightly golden) and ate the delicious macaroons for dessert. They are chewy, sweet, and perfect!
This is the second post in the new season of “Around the World in 12 Dishes.” This year we have chosen the following countries:
March – Ireland
April – France
May – Finland
June – Spain
July – Kenya
August – Egypt
September – New Zealand
October – Korea
November – Thailand
December – Jamaica
January – Peru
February – Canada
We are inviting our readers to participate in our culinary adventure.
For each country, we will have a coloring placemat and a four page passport with lots of fun information, questions, a spot for a photo of you and your dish and space to put your own recipe, so you and your children can really explore and it will be a nice keepsake! You can find the placemats and passports on our Facebook page and our Google+ community page. Each country will also have its own linky, where you can link up your own related posts- we would love to see your posts!
Participating blogs: Adventures In Mommydom, Creative Family Fun, Domestic Goddesque, Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls, Juggling with Kids, Kid World Citizen, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Little Artists, Mermaids’ Makings, Montessori Tidbits, Mummymummymum and The Educators’ Spin On It.
Visit the following links to see how other families are learning about France, and please share your adventures learning about France here:
Awesome! Those macaroons look yummy 🙂 Thanks for participating!