We are still doing our Olympic Cooking thing, although the oldest was in OH for the summer and we had my nephew living with us for the summer, so the audience was a bit different.  We focused on desserts, primarily, this time around.  In part because I was in the hospital and recovering when I would normally be planning out the menus and the Olympics snuck up on me this year. It is getting harder and harder not to duplicate more countries, but that's a good thing.  As of the end of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, we have been doing this cooking thing for 7 Olympic Games, making 110 Olympic meals/desserts from 74 different countries (obviously some countries have been repeats).  See the map below for the countries we covered in each Olympic Games or check out the rest of the blog.  For someone who does not enjoy cooking, that is truly a feat to be celebrated!  We started out doing a lot more in depth learning about each country, but as the kids grew and time was more valuable, we moved more toward a taste of each place.  Yes, some of the recipes have been made multiple times because they have become a favorite of one of us.  It's been a journey.  During the next Olympics, Chip and I will be empty nesters, so I really don't know if this tradition will continue, but I've had a blast doing it and I do think that my kids (well, maybe two of them, at least!) appreciate what we've done.  If you've joined us for the ride, I hope you learned somethings or found some new recipes to try.  

Olympic Cooking, Day 1 
Crème Brûlée from France

We had fun with the blowtorch! Obvs this was our French dessert and most of us thought it was yummy. Easy to make and a nice pleasantly light flavor.

RECIPE -> https://natashaskitchen.com/quick-creme-brulee-recipe/

Olympic Cooking, Day 2
Creponné from Algeria

Olympic Cooking, Day 5
Paraguayan Chipas

Olympic Cooking, Day 7
Egyptian Meshabek

Someone asked me the other day how long we had been doing the Olympic Cooking thing. We started in 2008 and did crafts and other educational things in addition to cooking. As the kids grew, time to do anything other than cooking got away from us and we transitioned to mostly culinary adventures. At the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics, we have sampled the cuisine of 60 different countries over 94 meals (obviously we have repeated some countries, but not recipes) with adaptations made for dairy-sensitivity for several years and through the struggle of an eating disorder. We have learned more about what flavors we like and what we don't. It’s a load of planning, researching recipes, shopping, plus the time of cooking. Every country we do is/was a participant of the Olympiad when we cooked it. You can search for the labels Olympics and cooking in the sidebar to go to any of the pages. Curious about which countries we have explored, you can check out the google map (layered with each Olympic games as a different color) by clicking below.

It's our final 2022 Olympic cooking day!! Phew. We made it all 17 days. Thanks for joining in our adventures.

Today’s country was Serbia. I made Prebranac and Vanilice cookies.

The Vanilice are similar to the Austrian Linzer cookies. The cookies themselves aren’t as sweet and we filled these with apricot preserves (and a few with raspberry jam). The recipe I used was found on the Serbian tourism site, but when I clicked the link contained in the recipe, it took me to a very different recipe for Vanilice… hmm. Well, I followed the original one I found since that’s what I had shopped for. I halved the recipe and we still had a huge amount of cookies. I also made homemade vanilla sugar since I couldn’t find any in the stores and it is pretty easy. These were tasty. Not as sweet as the Linzer cookies, but just as good. It was hard to get them coated in vanilla sugar after they were cooked, whereas the linzer cookies baked with the almond sugar on them. Prebranac Recipe -> https://www.worldfoodstory.co.uk/recipe/prebranac-serbian-baked-beans Vanilice Recipe -> https://www.serbia.com/10-serbian-recipes-everybody-know/ Then scroll down to #6 about halfway.

We made Chakchak (pronounced shek-shek), a popular honey cake from Kazahkstan. This took a while to make, but I had high hopes after reading some comments that likened chakchak to Rice Krispie treats. I will admit I was disappointed in these. Now, I know we made these a day in advance, but the honey didn’t set, even when they were refrigerated overnight as the recipe suggested. They just have a sort of stale taste. No one hated them, but no one particularly liked them either. Can’t win them all!

Olympic cooking was Norway - Kjøttkaker med brunsaus (Norwegian meatballs in brown sauce) served with boiled potatoes, peas and carrots.

Served as shown, this was delicious and had great flavor. Eaten without gravy, Ebabe said the meat was mostly flavorless. The gravy reminded me of the sauce we make when we have stroganoff, but without the mushrooms. Oh, we did not use the gjtost (brown goat cheese) that was optional, mostly because I inadvertently left it off my shopping list. Recipe here -> https://food52.com/recipes/6239-mom-s-norwegian-meatballs-with-gravy-kjottkaker-med-brunsaus

Another day of Olympic cooking down, just a few more to go. Today we experienced Argentinian Chocotorte.

I had to order Chocolinas from Amazon for this one and had to find dulce de leche at the grocery store.

Olympic Cooking Day 12 - Trinidad Doubles served with Cucumber and Bandhania Chutney and Mango Colatas.

I specifically planned Trinidad’s meal for today because K had her World Music concert tonight and played double steel pans.

This was good. The bread was delicious and the channa was tasty without too much spice and quite filling. It's also vegetarian, so we will be making this again when our vegetarian is home from college. Even the picky eater said she liked this, although she said she wouldn’t pick it over Mac & cheese.