As part of our nutrition week™ at CRP, we asked some of our E-Learning Language Exchange partners to spill the beans about their favourite foods, recipes, and a typical ‘day-in-the-life’ of meals in their country.
We found that although E-Learning partners are often separated by continents and oceans, they have a lot in common!
Carol & Abdullah
Carol: I’m from Canada, the East Coast.
Abdullah: And I’m from Iraq. We’ve been E-Learning Language Exchange Partners for 1 year now!
C: In a typical day in our family, we usually start off the day with some coffee, fruit, and eggs on toast, or cereal, or porridge/oatmeal.
A: For breakfast, we have eggs, or cheese with jam and a cup of tea – pretty much the same as Carol!
C: Lunch is usually something like a ham sandwich with lettuce and tomato, or egg salad with green onion and cucumber, or soup!
A: For me, I have rice and fish, meat and vegetables.
C: For dinner, we usually have salad, meet like beef, chicken or lamb, vegetables, and some fruit for dessert. On weekends, we have Apple Pie – I’ve attached the recipe!
A: I try to eat simply because I don’t like to eat a lot in the evening. Soup, some bread or biscuits, some more tea….
My favourite meals are all meatbased – kebabs, meat soup, meatballs… But with a nice fresh salad, watermelon or cold juice to compliment it!
Helene & Suleiman
Suleiman: We’ve been E-Learning partners since the Spring – I guess just under 6 months.
Helene: I’m from a city in the US called New Oreleans. We have a lot of traditional dishes, but the most famous is probably gumbo.
Gumbo is a thin stew that can be made from lots of different things, including chicken, sausage and seafood (we have lots of seafood in New Orleans!). What makes gumbo unique is its base, called a roux, made from slowly heating oil with flour and stirring constantly. It can take up to an hour for the roux to reach the correct color, and it’s very easy to burn if you’re not careful, but it gives the gumbo its incredibly rich flavor. Some people in South Louisiana put potato salad in it, but my family never did that. Even though I now live in Berlin, Germany, I still make gumbo on special occasions.
Suleiman: I’m from Southern Iraq. Iraq is a huge country, so there are many different regional variations – there are dishes like batcha in Baghdad, the head of a sheep, and dolma (vine leaves), biryani, kebabs…
There’s khemar, which is milk from the buffalo mixed with pastry – we eat this for breakfast, it’s very healthy!
In the south, our famous foods are all fish based, like ‘mezzguf’ which is a big grilled fish.
I lived in a place where the two rivers in Iraq meet – we used to catch our fish from there, or we’d buy them from the market.
We cut the fish in half, grilling the back and then the front over a fire. Then we add some spices, salt, pepper, and grill some tomatoes. It’s really easy and extremely tasty!
Helene: We both come from places with lots of fish!
Best-Ever Apple Pie – Canadian Living Magazine
Chicken and Sausage Gumbo – NY Times
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