My husband and I have been lucky to have led a pretty cosmopolitan life.  When I was growing up, my family lived in India, Nigeria, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago before we finally settled in the United States.  My husband similarly lived in Japan and England when he was a kid.  Ours was an office romance and as romances go, it was similarly cosmopolitan.  We met in Boston, dated for a while in New York, lived together in Turkey and got married when we were living in London.  

We're also pretty adventurous eaters.  We are game to try anything.  Many of our favorite memories of the places we love involve food in these different places: grabbing a warm simit from the street vendor before heading to work in Istanbul, having great Thai food in Stockholm (of all places!), having the best dinner ever at Andrew Fairlie at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland. I could go on and on....     

Given this nomadic lifestyle, I have always had the idea of systematically experimenting with different world cuisines.  I almost started my Eating Global project when we were in London.  The idea was that we would pick a country/cuisine.  We’d then cook many dishes from that country over the course of the month, we’d invite some friends over to dinner and if we had the chance (and our wallets permitting) would cap the experience by eating at a really good restaurant that epitomized food from that country.  And London had a wealth of restaurants for us to pick from.  

But we started our family in 2003 and now are proud parents of 2 devilishly curious little angels.  Enough said, I think.  We were suddenly swimming in diapers, baby foods and all the paraphanelia that comes with two intensely curious boys under the age of 5.  Needless to say, Eating Global was the farthest thing from our minds.  Most days we counted ourselves lucky if we ate dinner together without babies crying.

Now fast forward to 2011.  The boys are 8 and 5 years old and both boys will be in school starting this September.  And they are completely the opposite of adventurous when it comes of food they will eat.  One day (afters months of subsisting on chicken nuggets, hamburgers and spagetti and meatballs) I realized I was doing them a disservice by not exposing them to different cuisines.  Both love geography and can spend hours gazing at maps.  And so I resurrected the Eating Global project with a twist.  We would pick a country to learn about some more and I would cook food from that country as part of the project.  What better way to introduce them to different cultures than with food?

And so here we are.  

There is no particular order to which countries we choose.  Once we choose a country, we spend some time reading about the history of the country and importantly, the history of the country’s cuisine.  I typically will pick one history book and a couple of cookbooks for us to read.  We also then tend to supplement our knowledge with some web browsing.  Some of the best tips and advice on food that I have received are from other blogs and sites. I’ll try and make sure to faithfully reference these.  We’ll cook a handful of the recipes through the course of the month and at the end, I will ask my two most honest (and let me tell you, they do not mince their words!) pint sized critics to give their verdict on the food.  

Thanks for stopping by!