Around the World Cooking Challenge

Remember WorldEats, that challenge we were doing that we haven't posted about in nearly three years?

Progress slowed considerably in recent years thanks to the whole pregnancy and having an infant thing, but we didn't actually quit doing it. We just owe the blog a lot of posts about our adventures, old and new (besides all the trip recaps; who knows if we even have any memories of those trips left?).

That said, the one thing that did effectively pause our WorldEats exploration was the COVID-19 pandemic. Self-quarantine, plus trying to limit the amount of contact with the outside world, plus a bunch of restaurants temporarily closing for safety reasons (or in some cases, sadly permanently closing), plus most of the restaurants we would want to try for WorldEats being outside our delivery radius, means that we haven't done much over the past few months.

Love exploring our giant world through food!

I was stuck in a bit of a rut in the spring, and I was thinking about how much I missed our WorldEats exploration, especially how much I missed introducing new flavors and foods that we loved to baby B, and started wondering if maybe we should start another challenge (yes, I like challenges; they give me focus) for home cooking. As if the 52 week cooking challenge and WorldEats and the periodic World Cup challenges weren't enough, what if we did WorldEats but in a cooking challenge?

Say hello to our Around the World Cooking Challenge (AtWCC), which we kicked off this month (June 2020)!

The current plan is to go in alphabetical order just for some sort of structure, but I might break that if I find a cookbook in the (virtual) library that I can't wait to try and decide to cook (part of) the book. I'm also planning to mix the US states and major territories into that alphabetical order (we're part of the world too, even if we don't always act like it!). I've always felt that you gain a greater appreciation for other cultures through food, and the US is so regional that some areas might as well be separate countries, so it makes sense to add the different states and territories in here.

I had forgotten this was on the wall of Eataly! I had already decided to try to make bread for each of our exploration locations, and this map is going to come in handy on our journey!
I know this challenge has been done before, and I've found various blogs and Instagram accounts doing the same, but I'm excited to see how ours turns out! I anticipate some hurdles when it comes to figuring out egg replacements or my disinclination to cook red meat at home (don't really eat that much of it anyway, and interestingly we've become more and more plant-based as the pandemic rages on) or to deep fry at home (and we haven't tested our new air fryer yet), but hopefully we'll find some great things that work for our family and the challenge. I'm not planning on a strict time schedule (pinning it down to once a week is too much structure and pressure for me) or limiting myself to one recipe/meal per country, so we might never make it to Zimbabwe, but it'll be fun along the way! I'm really looking forward to researching all these new foods, dishes, and places, and I know we'll learn so much on this journey.

First up is Afghanistan (which as of the time of this writing, is already in progress). All posts will be labeled with AtWCC, we'll keep a status list in the sidebar, and maybe we'll also manage to finally catch up and write some of the dine-out WorldEats posts for the same countries as we continue on our journey. Hope you'll join us on our newest food adventure!