Around the World Cooking Challenge Update

Writing this post about changes to our plans for the Around the World Cooking Challenge gave me a bit of deja vu. Our original plan had been to go alphabetically through the world (including the states of the United States), cooking each place as a unit and learning as we went. It was going to be a long process, but I liked the structure of going one unit at a time. After all, if we tried something in-between for another country and liked it, why wouldn't I want to make it again years down the line?

This sounded a lot like our original plan for WorldEats, except that was going geographically on a walk around the world instead of alphabetically. We were only going to count visits for each country when we were "doing" that country. Theoretically, it sounded like a good idea. In the first few units, for Canada, Cuba, and Jamaica, it forced us to visit places on our list that were further from home, places we had always wanted to go but were too lazy to plan visits to in advance, and the experience was really rewarding. (We were much more spontaneous diners then, not really schedulers or reservation people for the most part.) But there were so many good places along the way, many that are no longer with us, that deserved a place in the WorldEats exploration, so we revised it, gave up on the geographic walk, and decided to just count anything that felt "worthy" to us. 

Cuba WorldEats! One day, we will get around to posting about this cubano with yucca fries. We went to that restaurant two or three times, so it would be "fresh" when we wrote the post, but we never did...

Well, the same thing is happening again. I made some dishes that were really good and would absolutely, 100%, be part of the AtWCC if I had been up to that country's cuisine, so why not count it? I'm not throwing all the structure out the window, as I'm still generally following the alphabetical framework, but if things pop up in-between that should count for other countries, then they will.

What types of things would "count"? Not an exact science, but some ideas. First, if it's an iconic dish from a country's culture, or something really popular or widely eaten, or just something that would have come up in my research as a must-cook, then it should qualify. Second, if it turned out well enough that I would be satisfied with it if we were doing that unit, then it should qualify. Third, and the thing that kind of pushed me in this direction, if the dish were really labor-intensive, took a lot of time to make, and was more of a special project, then it should probably qualify. Last note, unlike WorldEats, I'm not going back in time to pull up every recipe I've ever made that would count, but just anything from the date we decided to do the AtWCC and forward.

These will count for Lebanon!

Some examples, since I did that last time too when we switched up WorldEats:

I made some Karelian pies for the Finnish challenge in the 52 week cooking challenge. Put nicely, they did not turn out well. I want to try making them again sometime when I would hopefully do a better job. I am not counting those.

I made shish tawook for the Lebanese challenge in the 52 week cooking challenge. (Yes, a lot of this challenge modification was prompted by themes from the 52 week cooking challenge.) The skewers were amazing, and while I would make these again without hesitation when we got up to Lebanon, we are still in A (and the beginning of the letter A), so it might be a while. I am counting that.

I made chicken zorbian for the Yemeni challenge in the 52 week cooking challenge. (I am many posts behind...) It turned out pretty well, Y is very far away in the alphabet, and it was a lot of work. I don't know if I would make it again when we got to Yemen, but part of that is because I could just order it for less than $20 on DoorDash from our local Yemeni restaurant. Theirs tastes better, and it supports someplace local. I am counting that.

This is from one of the A locations. What do you think it is?

So, where are we on the Around the World Cooking Challenge anyway? I am clearly very behind in posting about our culinary adventures, so it should come as no surprise that that applies here too. We started in A with Afghanistan and then moved on to Alabama. I think we're most of the way through Alabama with a couple remaining things we want to try, and then it'll be on to Alaska. As far as posting, we haven't done any of those, and the only posts on this challenge are just us talking about it and not cooking anything. Need to get on that. The next post about the challenge itself will be a running list of what we've done for the challenge (which should also be pinned in the sidebar), and you'll notice that the first entry there isn't for a place that starts with A at all. Hopefully we'll catch up on some of these cooking challenge posts before the year is out!