Week 6: Hungary!

This week we chose a country to learn about by having MonkeyD flip through the pages of Children Just Like Me by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley.  This book shows photographs of children, their families, their homes, pets, etc from many countries around the world.  MonkeyD chose a picture of a girl holding a flute and said that she wanted to learn about the country that this girl, Monika, was from.  So we spent the week learning about Hungary. 

Unfortunately, the recipes that we tried out this week didn't go over that well with our kids.  The first recipe that we tried was for rakott burgonya, a casserole with layers of smoked sausage, potatoes and hard-boiled eggs.  I realized part way through making this dish that I could have had MonkeyD more involved in this There was a lot that she could have done to help with the layering of ingredients, but I was rushing to get the dish done while Lil' Pistol napped.  I think that the dish might have gone over better with the kids, but they don't like hard-boiled eggs, and something was wrong with our oven that evening so things didn't heat evenly.  

Another evening we had Hungarian Stuffed Peppers.  I liked that I could use my crock pot for this recipe.  I thought it was pretty tasty.  MonkeyD ate some of hers, after I let her add ketchup and mustard :-)  Lil' Pistol may have had one bite, I'm not sure.  She really doesn't like trying new foods! 

A third evening The Big Bad Dad made Hungarian Goulash.  You can't really spend a week learning about Hungary without at least having the word goulash pop into your head, right?  It was a yummy beef stew for The Big Bad Dad and I, but MonkeyD made faces before even trying it and then finally giving in and telling us she would eat six bites.  Lil' Pistol wouldn't even give it a try :-( 

Since Hungarian recipes are known for their use of paprika, I tried simply adding a little paprika to our green beans.  I put some on the side of MonkeyD's plate and told  her to try it and see if she liked it.  She actually ate the paprika alone, saying, "mmm Yum!" and then when it was almost gone she said she didn't like it.  So, I don't exactly know what to make of that ;-)

I know that the strudel recipe that I had picked out would have been a big winner with all of us, but I ran out of ambition to make it :-(  I'm sure that we'll have it sometime soon though, since I bought the dough to make it already! 

A wonderful friend of mine is married to someone from Hungary and when I asked her for suggestions for this week she mentioned that vitamin C was discovered by a Hungarian, and she suggested drinking a glass of orange juice in honor of that fact.  So, although the main dishes that we prepared didn't go over well, we had no problem getting MonkeyD to drink a few glasses of orange juice.  She wondered aloud, how could orange juice have vitamins in it and be good for me when my tongue thinks it tastes so good!?  She also shared her knowledge of vitamin C in orange juice with her little sister. 

My friend also passed on the trivia that the first (noiseless) match was invented by the Hungarian János Irinyi.  So, I pointed this little fact out as I lit a candle during dinner. 

We're looking forward to receiving a postcard from these friends when they visit Hungary next week.  She said that the stamps from Hungary are collected around Europe. 

We borrowed a couple of CDs from our library of music by well-known Hungarian composers.  We listened to Bartok - Lili Kraus' piano music and Solti Mephisto Magic.  Mephisto Magic had music by Franz Liszt, Bela Bartok, Leo Weiner and Zoltan Kodaly.  I mentioned that the composers were from Hungary and then we just listened to the music in the background as we went about our playing.  Naturally, both girls were inspired to do some dancing too.   And, I couldn't help but show MonkeyD the Hungarian Rhapsody - Tom and Jerry clip (though I don't usually let her watch Tom and Jerry because of the violence). 

MonkeyD and I tried watching Liszt's Rhapsody.  She isn't quite old enough for this movie though.  She would have preferred a cartoon, I'm sure!  But, at the very first scene she asked me if that was Hungary.  I said yes, but clarified that that is what it looked like years ago.  She wanted to know what it looks like today and speculated that it probably has lots of tall buildings now.  So, I think that she was observing the backgrounds of the movie, the music, and the costumes.  She didn't understand why some people were being mean to the young boy in the movie or why he was trying to lighten his skin by washing it, and that gave us a short conversation about how there are many different skin colors.

The books that we read this week were:

Climbing Rosa by Shelley Fowles.

Two Greedy Bears by Mirra Ginsburg

Little Rooster's Diamond Button retold by Margaret Read MacDonald

The Little Golden Lamb retold by Ellin Greene 

The Brand New Kid by Katie Couric 

All of these stories were requested to be read more than once throughout the week.  The first four books were based on folk tales from Hungary.  The last book, I found in a search for Hungarian children's books.  It's about a class that has a new kid in it.  The story never actually says that the new student is from Hungary, but since the summary of the book on the library's website said it was about a new student from Hungary, I introduced it that way to MonkeyD.  It's helpful in starting a conversation about accepting people that look different from us and being kind and inclusive to new students at school. 

I read that embroidery is an important part of Hungarian culture, so this seemed like a great time to introduce MonkeyD to embroidery.  We looked at some images of Hungarian embroidery on the computer, then I drew a simple flower picture (based on an image we had seen) onto a scrap of fabric.  I used colored pencils to draw the picture and then let MonkeyD choose the embroidery floss that she wanted to use for each part of the project.  After 3 or 4 stitches she was remembering which side of the fabric she needed to put her needle through.  The difficulty she was having was pulling the thread too far and pulling the needle off.  We fixed that by tying the needle onto the thread :-)  She seemed to really enjoy this project and it gave her some satisfaction to know she was doing it on her own.  She proudly showed The Big Bad Dad and requested to work on it again.