Cookbooks & Passports in China

Flowering Green Tea - Shooting Star

Today was a super busy day in Cookbooks & Passports!  We visited China!  We started the day by reading What's for lunch?: how schoolchildren eat around the world by Andrea Curtis and Yeh-Shen: a Cinderella story from China by Ai-Ling Louie (other books I checked out from the library for today include The Runaway Rice Cake by Ying Chang Compestine, Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim and Thanking the Moon by Grace Lin).  What's for lunch? showed examples of school lunches from all over the world - and it made the campers hungry!  


After reading our stories for the day, we located China on our world maps, had our passports stamped and colored a picture of a panda and bamboo.  Our morning snack was Chinese Fruit Salad, which we adapted from a Food.com recipe.  Our salad included bananas, kiwi (did you know kiwi are native to China?), mango and watermelon with a sprinkling of Chinese five spice powder.  It was a very refreshing salad!  Nine campers gave it a 'thumbs up,' three voted with 'sideways thumbs,' and three gave it a 'thumbs down.'  We also enjoyed some mini mochi candies (they're made with rice flour and taste like a cross between marshmallows and gummy bears) from World Market.  The campers loved them!  Twelve 'thumbs up,' and three 'sideways thumbs.'  They all got to take a small container of mochi home this afternoon to share with their families, but I think several will end up eating them all themselves!

For our afternoon snack we had Red Adzuki Bean Rice Cake (Nian Gao) from Live Laugh Eat and Honey Milk Tea from Allrecipes.com.  These snacks weren't as popular as the fruit salad and mochi - the cake had four 'thumbs up,' three 'sideways thumbs,' seven 'thumbs down' and one camper didn't try it.  We were in a hurry to eat snack and had to cut the cake while it was still warm and little gooey which may have affected how they thought it tasted (I thought it was delicious!).  The honey milk tea was a little less popular with three 'thumbs up,' two 'sideways thumbs,' and ten 'thumbs down.'  I thought it was a little strong at first, but after the ice melted a little I really liked it.

While our cake was baking we brewed Flowering Tea (a black tea 'flower' and a green tea 'flower').  These 'flowers' are tea leaves and occasionally actual flowers or petals which are bundled and sewn together - when they are put in hot water the tea unfurls and resembles a blooming flower!  The campers drew pictures of both flowers and sampled the tea (they weren't very popular but a lot of the campers did try them!).  We also made paper snakes following directions from Craftiments.  While we crafted and snacked we played traditional Chinese music on Pandora.  It was a fun, full day in China!

Tomorrow we sail to the land down under - Australia!  


I am linking this post about our adventure learning about China with the Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #7!

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