Week 7: Iran!

MonkeyD spun the globe and picked Iran to be our focus country this week.

 

We watched the DVD The Little Travelers Iran  towards the end of the week, but I wish that we had used it as an introduction to the country.  This is the first video we have watched from this series, but I will be sure to look for their other videos in the future.  It's a 40 minute tour of Iran, narrated by two little girls.  They have a very interesting blog as well, http://thelittletravelers.typepad.com/.

 

I tried to take the easy route to trying out some Middle Eastern food by buying some hummus.  (I know, I know!  Why buy hummus when its simple to make fresh, yadda yadda...but I have actually attempted making fresh hummus in the past and managed to fail miserably, so I decided to buy the canned version that happened to be in the International Foods aisle at the grocery store).  It was pretty tasty.  But more spicy than I expected.  MonkeyD tried a little bite and pointed out that it was too spicy for her.  Lil' Pistol shocked me by eating more than one helping with her little crackers.  Then all of the sudden she started crying and wiping at her mouth.  I guess the spice got to her!  The Big Bad Dad pointed out the words "HOT!  SPICY!" to me on the can when I told him the story.  Oops!  Sorry kids! 



Baghlava



 

Fortunately, The Big Bad Dad was in the cooking mood over the weekend, so we sampled a few different dishes.  The first was Baghlava.  We got the recipe from the book Cooking the Middle Eastern Way by Alison Behnke.  We have used the cookbooks in this series for a couple of countries now and I highly recommend them.  They give a brief introduction to the country or geographical area at the beginning of the book.  Then they give a menu example and corresponding recipes for each meal of the day.  The last section of the book describes a few holidays or festivals and some typical recipes for those occasions. 

 

We brought our Baghlava to a party and it went over very well.  Lil' Pistol had helped me shell the pistachios and MonkeyD had helped The Big Bad Dad with some of the measuring, mixing, layering ingredients and buttering the layers.  She had also gone with him to the international foods store that we just discovered in our community, World Harvest Foods (The Big Bad Dad said this is one of his new favorite stores!).  Strangely, MonkeyD refused to sample the Baghlava.  Lil' Pistol followed her big sister's example, probably thinking that her big sister was onto some evil plot of the grown-ups to trick them into eating something bad.  But, the next day, when Lil' Pistol thought she was being sneaky, she sampled some of the Baghlava and must have liked it because she kept "sneaking" some more.

 



Kookoo-e Gol-e Kalem



The next day we tried out Kookoo-e Gol-e Kalem.  This was a vegetarian cauliflower dish.  Unfortunately, this dish didn't taste as good to us as it smelled.  The fun part of this meal was that we ate on the floor, like we saw them do in the Little Travelers video.  MonkeyD thinks it is so much fun to eat on a blanket on the floor!  She was in the greatest mood as she set the dishes out for us and directed us each to our place.  We tried to find a traditional Iranian music channel to listen to on Pandora, but I don't think we got the right one.  It was fun way to eat, but definitely a messy experience with Lil' Pistol dropping sticky rice all over the place.



Chelow kabab with chicken



 

Another meal that we had was Chelow kabab.  I think that all of us thought this rice dish was delicious. 



Persian pistachio nougat



 

The last homemade Persian treat that we had was Persian pistachio nougat.

We finished off our Iranian culinary experience with some sherbet.  This may have been a bit of a stretch, but I had read that the idea for the sherbet that we eat here originated in Iran with a sweetened fruit juice, http://www.answers.com/topic/sherbet .

 

We concluded our introduction to Iran week with a little field trip to a local imported rug gallery, Eastern Rug Gallery.  We asked to have the rugs from Iran pointed out to us.  We were also shown rugs from other areas of the world.  MonkeyD showed me which ones she liked and we talked a little bit about the different colors and patterns in them.

 

The books that we read this week were:

• The Rich Man and the Parrot retold by Suzan Nadimi - We enjoyed this colorfully illustrated retelling of a tale by Rumi. 
• The Legend of the Persian Carpet by Tomie DePaola - This was a fun story about the beautiful Persian carpets.  It piqued our interest in Perisan rugs and added to our trip to the imported rug gallery. 
• The Earth Shook by Donna Jo Napoli - I wasn't too excited about this story - for our purposes.  It was a little too dark to read to my not-quite-four-year-old.  If only there were time to read every book alone before reading it to the kids.  It's about a little girl whose home is destroyed by an earthquake.  When she wakes up the people are all gone but she meets some animals.  Each animal threatens her.  In the end, she makes peace with all the animals though. 
• Count Your Way Through Iran by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson - I thought this book would be a great, simple introduction to some things from Iran (like the tar instrument, some animals found in the Caspian Sea, and the Towers of Silence).  However, MonkeyD didn't give the book a chance. 

 

On Amazon.com we listened to (and MonkeyD danced to) some music clips from a CD that I had tried to get at the library but was unfortunately not available, Rough Guide to Music of Iran.

 

We didn't make a craft this week, but I did find this website, http://www.ehow.com/list_6712810_persian-crafts-kids.html,  with some suggestions of crafts.   This website, http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/iran.html, is a list of helpful links for learning about Iran too.