For a treat during France Week we made madeleines. Have you ever had these little sponge cakes? They’re delicious, but I think what makes them extra special is their fun shell-shape. I found my madeleine pan at Williams-Sonoma, but I’ve seen them at Target, too.
I have a madeleine recipe from Martha Stewart, but before I [...]

For Week Two of the Pudding Pop Challenge, I decided to start with vanilla pudding. What goes best with vanilla pudding? Vanilla wafers, of course. And because it’s us, we added mini chocolate chips. Delicious!
If you missed Week One, the Pudding Pop Challenge isn’t really about making pudding pops. It’s about making pudding pops without a [...]

Have you ever had a macaron? I had never heard of these fancy French cookies until Design Mom wrote about them last year. (It took me a minute to realize they weren’t at all related to macaroons.) Since we’re focusing on France this week, it seemed like a great time to give macarons a try.

The kids voted and the third Country of the Week is France. C’est bon!
I don’t know about you, but when I think of France I think of amazing food. But man cannot live by bread alone, c’est dommage, so this morning we brainstormed a list of What We Know or Would Like to Know More [...]

Here is Will enjoying his morning café au lait…sipping from the mug my mother gave me with the Jane Austen quote “There is no place like home for real comfort”…the orioles and hummingbirds flitting back and forth from the feeders to the trees…the gentle reminder that time to dream and reflect and breathe is an [...]

Today the kids and I headed to downtown Minneapolis for an international culinary adventure. I’ve always wanted to visit a food truck, so when I read about World Street Kitchen it seemed like a perfect way to blend a fun summer outing with our Country of the Week.

The good news is that the Couscous with Beef and Vegetables that I’d been planning to make for Egypt Week contains turnips, which serendipitously came in our CSA box this week. The bad news is that when I googled couscous for more information, I discovered that this dish is actually popular in the Maghreb, which [...]

The other day I made Christina’s turtle candies for Grandpa Tony’s Father’s Day present. Normally when I cook, I have a recipe firmly in hand to make sure I’m doing everything right. But this time I was in a hurry and, having a general idea of how to make the turtles, I decided to just [...]

This week’s featured country is Egypt. To get started, I asked the kids to list everything they could about Egypt. They came up with:

Egyptian gods
Cleopatra
Roman Empire
King Tut
pyramids
couscous (that was mine)
sacred cats
Africa
Nile River
sahlab (drink)
Sahara desert
camels
hieroglyphs
The Prince of Egypt (movie)
Nefertiti
Sphinx