Global Chefs Visit Germany

A flock of black eagles!

Today was our last day of Global Chefs summer camp!  We 'visited' Germany by making a German salad, German chocolate cake with a secret ingredient, a German craft and had a lesson on German numbers.

While looking for Germany on our world map this morning, one of our campers passed out chocolates his dad had brought back from a famous chocolate shop in Berlin.  The chocolates were delicious and it was a nice treat!  Two of our campers have been to Germany before and were very excited about today's theme!  The plant and animal picture for today was of the black forest and a black eagle.


Before we started making our snacks this morning, we explored the international culinary gardens on the community garden campus.  This year the international gardens represent: Brazil, China, Italy and Germany.  In the German garden we saw leeks, potatoes and... a gnome!  Before heading back inside to the cool air conditioning of our classroom, we harvested dill for our salad.

For our morning snack we made Gurkensalat (German Cucumber Salad) from German Recipes and More.  The campers peeled and sliced the cucumber, sliced the onion and measured out the ingredients for the dressing.  They were really hungry so instead of chilling the salad for a while, we dug in right away!  The onion had too much bite for the campers, only four gave it a 'thumbs up,' but eight gave it a 'sideways thumb.'  They liked everything except for the onion, and one camper didn't like the salad at all and gave it a 'thumbs down.'

Our afternoon snack was German Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake from Cookie Madness.  The campers tried to talk us out of the sauerkraut (secret ingredient, it adds moisture to the cake, not a pickled flavor) as soon as they saw the recipe in their journals on Monday!  They were convinced it would ruin the cake, despite my assurance that it wouldn't.  The campers ended up liking this recipe much more than the gurkensalat - everyone tried the cake (some without chocolate frosting), and thirteen gave it a 'thumbs up' while one camper gave it a 'sideways thumb.'  We made the cake with wheat flour so I didn't taste it, but Nicole said she really liked it.  I will have to make my own gluten-free version soon!

Our craft today was making German black eagle, which is on Germany's coat of arms.  Our eagles were made from TP tubes and turned out to be really cute!  The campers also had a lesson on German numbers and how phone numbers in Germany are different than in the United States.  Nicole led the activity with a worksheet that the campers filled out, they had to figure out what the German numbers were and add, subtract them or create a phone number.  While we worked on our crafts and making snack today, we listened to traditional German music on Pandora.

In a week I will be teaching another internationally themed cooking camp with Nicole: Cookbooks & Passports!  I learned a lot this week and am excited to have another week learning about different cultures and trying new foods!

 
I am linking this post about our adventure learning about Germany with the Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #6!





For more international craft and recipes ideas, check out my Pinterest board Global Chefs + Crafts!