Around the World in 26* Meals

I’m a sucker for a project.  Or a challenge.  Seriously, if there’s ever a task you need done, if you call it a “challenge” and let me organize the heck out of it using Excel, I’ll jump to it.  Enter Around the World.

In the car one day, my dad issued this challenge: for the next twenty six weeks, cook a dish from a different country representing each letter of the alphabet.  I’m not quite sure what prompted this challenge.  Maybe he has a secret desire to be force fed exotic dishes that may or may not turn out to me anywhere near authentic.  Maybe he was just sick of hearing about my wedding plans.  Either way, I accepted with excitement.  As soon as I got home, I went to the US State Department website and transferred the list of countries the recognize into Excel (plus Taiwan, because we’re all sorts of political on this blog).  This gives me a total of 196 countries.  Each week, using a random number generator (thanks, Google!) I’ll pick out a country for each letter of the alphabet.  So in the vein of Jules Verne, let’s set out around the world!

*So, according to the US State Department, there are no countries that begin with either W or X.  So, in actuality, we’re traveling around the world in 24 meals.  But let’s not get technical…