Miss Julia did a unit on Greek culture in her third grade class this year, and one of her assignments was to make a Greek meal for her family. I inserted the idea for gyros and baklava into her brain while she was asleep (Inception, anyone?) because I was pretty sure those were the only two remotely "ethnic" foods that anyone in our family (okay, the children) would actually eat. Turns out I was right. Except that they didn't really eat the dinner besides the bread part of the gyros. But they sure loved that dessert.
I was so proud of the way that Julia worked on this assignment, gathering all of the ingredients and working her little heart out on the meal part like a Greek sous chef, and then typing away for literally hours to finish everything that she wanted to put on her project board. A sampling:
"For dinner I had gyros. Gyros are kind of like flat bread with toppings on it such as meat, tomatoes, feta cheese, onions, and a yogurt sauce. The yogurt sauce has 4 ingredients: plain yogurt, cucumbers, dill, and salt. It took us a long time to make it. We chopped meat and I stirred the yogurt and measured all the ingredients. It took me and my mom 1 hour to make dinner at least!
For my dessert I picked baklava. Baklava is really good, it has one ingredient that is healthy for you and that ingredient is water. I know it sounds weird and gross to you but that is part of Greek culture."
It was nice to have so much help in the kitchen, I'll tell you that. But I didn't have the heart to let her in on the secret that most times dinners take at least an hour to make, barring oven pizza and cereal nights, anyway. She'll have to learn that one when she's a little older, I suppose.
And what's a Greek end-of-unit celebration without a third grade toga party, I ask you? Nothing but grape juice and cucumbers, that's what.
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