Eating Around the World (and Math and Statistics, too)

In the midst of the COVID-19 world crisis and complete shutdown, we found ourselves eating many of the same meals...chicken with rice, turkey with rice, pork with rice, and then surprise! those same meats with pasta or potatoes. Thankfully we had the choices, and frankly, I could eat chicken with rice every day. :-) hehe One night last week, T. came up with an amazing idea to "Eat the 7 continents" for dinners, being that there are 7 continents and 7 days in the week, that would work perfect. To arrange our menu for the week, the kids and I got out our DnD dice (haven't played the game yet, but we have 4 sets ready to go!). First, we #'ed the continents and rolled an 8-sided die to discover which day of the week we'd be eating from where. This week, we rolled: Monday-Antarctica Tuesday-Australia Wednesday-South America Thursday-Europe Friday-North America Saturday-Africa Sunday-Asia Since continents are large, we decided to dig deeper and assign a country for each day according to the continent...so, here came the DnD dice again, trying to find "fair" ways to pick the countries. Monday was easy. There are no countries in Antarctica, so we declared Antarctica as a food-storage, freezer-meal, traditional-expedition food night. Tuesday-Australia. At first we were going to just pick food from Australia. I got to play at the World's Fair in 1988 in Sydney Australia with the Golden Empire Suns Youth Band, so I knew that New Zealand also was part of the continent, as we'd visited many awesome places there, too. So, I inquired Google on how many countries are actually part of the Australian continent, and lo and behold, there are 26 (including dependent territories of Oceania). This is the list we are using: https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/countries-of-australia-and-oceania.html (clever, huh?!). So, we 26 countries, we used a 20 die and a 6 die, but then, we could never get a 1, so, first we rolled a 4 sided die to see if we'd roll one die, or if we'd be rolling both. We didn't roll a one with the four-sided die, so we rolled both and got TONGA TONGAN RECIPES: Lime Chile Chicken: https://dish.co.nz/recipes/tonga-chilli-lime-chicken Boiled Taro with Coconut Milk: https://www.food.com/recipe/boiled-taro-with-coconut-milk-209574 Wednesday-South America. We used the DnD's 10 and 6. 15 countries, so if we roll a 16, that counts as 1 from this list: https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/countries-of-south-america.html We rolled a 9 and got PERU Thursday-Europe. 51 Countries?! There were not that many when I was in Geography in Jr. High School! Anywho, there are now. Here is the list: https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/countries-of-europe.html With 51 countries, which dice to use? Hmmm. 17x3? nope...no 17 sided dice, 20+20+8 will do. But first, we need to know if we're rolling 1, 2, or 3 dice...so, roll the 4 sided and see. If 1, then the 20, if 2, then 2 20's, if 3 or 4, then two 20's and one 8. Add them up, and see which country you'll be cooking from. We rolled a total of 8, so we're visiting BOSNIA and HERZEGOVINA (literally have never heard of the latter). Friday-North America. How many countries in North America, I asked my daughter, "2! Canada and America!". Cue the laugh track! hahaha I asked her about Mexico...and then decided to look it up. HELLO! I'd totally forgotten about Central America and Caribbean! The pirates would be so disappointed... From the online list we learned there are https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/l/List_of_North_American_countries.htm Saturday-Africa. I remember 40, but that was also wrong! haha. https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/countries-of-africa.html We rolled and got Ethiopia. Doro Wat stew and Injera bread. At first, I used this https://www.daringgourmet.com/doro-wat-spicy-ethiopian-chicken-stew/ and https://www.eatright.org/food/planning-and-prep/recipes/quick-injera-recipe I needed lots of substitutions, so I took a picture of the spices I put in: The meal turned out pretty good. Even the two pickiest kids gobbled it up...I think it was the bread on the side. :-)