Spaghetti or Falafels?

OR

When my husband & I were first married we had Family Home Evenings where we'd make a meal or dish from another country. It was before the internet so we went to the library to get a cookbook from the chosen country. We'd teach each other a little about the people and the culture. After about 6 months of doing this we lost interest.

However a few years later, in Seattle, we decided to start having the missionaries over for dinner. I always worried about what to feed them. Spaghetti, pizza, mac & cheese? Cooking has never been my forte or my desire. If the meal didn't include grilled cheese or toast then it was "too hard." I'm always up for a challenge though. So one evening I decided to make a regular dinner (don't remember what) and for dessert we had fondue. It was a huge hit with the sister missionaries.

Time passed and we moved back to southern California. We started having the missionaries over every month. This time we pulled out the globe. The elders got to spin the globe and pick a country. Their "mission" was always to try to stump me by picking a super hard country. Well, the only time I've been stumped was when an elder chose the Australian Aborigines. They don't keep their recipes written down and posted to the internet! So I ended up going with Australian food.

It's been a very fun tradition. Most of my meals have turned out pretty well. However, when we had an elder from Mongolia he asked me to make food from his country. Uh-oh! My dumplings tasted like egg-McMuffins! Like a good elder, he ate it anyway. So I have an unspoken rule to not make food from an elders' country. It's hard to compete with his mom's cooking - especially when I've never been to that country or tasted their food!

At one time, we were feeding 6-8 missionaries, my mom, aunt and our family. It got to be a really big deal. I was pregnant at that time, so I was nesting and really loved cooking. But I've had to scale it down a bit & keep it to the elders in my ward only.

It's always fun to see what country they pick and to see what recipes I can find. I am a somewhat picky eater, so I haven't made anything super odd. Plus, where we live, it's hard to find some of the foods like petrified shark, moose, grubs, or bats. I guess we have bats here but I wouldn't want to catch one and cook it!

Anyhow, I have saved all my recipes and compiled them into a cookbook. It's organized by country with a "menu" of what I served that night. Right now, my cookbook is selling on ebay. Just search for "World Cuisine Cookbook." It's a digital delivery so there's no shipping. The missionaries who have joined us for our tradition have really loved eating something from another country. We have all learned about the people in different parts of the world.