Happy day after Andorra day! Yesterday, apparently, was Andorra’s national holiday. Never heard of Andorra before?You’re in good company (at least I like to think of myself as good company…). According to my friend Jennifer Scheel Bushman, novelist and author of the new blog eat planet. Discover the world, Andorra is a tiny country wedged between France and Spain. Who knew? Her kids do, now, and before Jen’s done with her year-long alphabetical journey through the plates and palates ofcultures the world over, her kidswill know a little something – and taste a little something – from every country on the planet.
Jen, a former resident of Naperville who currently resides near Toronto, is the daughter of U.S. diplomats and grew up all over the world. Thus, she developed quite a sophisticated palate as a young child. She recalls loving artichokes at the age of three and “eating mussels in Brussels” when she was just six. Never shy about introducing her children – eleven-year-old John and eight-year-old Julia – to new foods, her plan is either to sample the fare at a Toronto eatery representative of the country next on her list or to whip up the dishes in her own kitchen. I suspect she’ll suffer more then one moment of panic when some obscure ingredient cannot be locatedand she promises to share those moments with us. Her posts comereplete with recipes and gorgeous pictures of the food and of her beautiful kids. I can hardly wait to see what she’ll dish up when Chinese cuisine is on the menu, as China, a place she and her parents once lived, is the setting for her first novel, Hard Sleeper.
So follow Jen and her kids around the globe – four countries down and only 191 to go – and discover the world with your own children, one plate at a time.
