Around the World in 12 Dishes: India

I’ve been looking forward to exploring India through food ever since we started the Around the World in 12 Dishes challenge.

The girls and I have already exploring India through books and crafts, so this time we focused on food and music.

Our food of choice was the mango lassi. A lassi is a very common and popular drink in India. I knew the girls would enjoy it.

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Throughout our food journey, I’ve been trying to keep things simple and appealing. Both of my girls can be picky eaters and I’m trying to help them learn to eat different foods from different cultures by using recipes that had some familiar ingredients.

The familiar ingredient in the lassi was yogurt, a favorite in our household.

To make our mango lassis, I cut up one fresh mango and added it to the blender. (If you’re like me and don’t know how to even start cutting up a fresh mango, you can use this simple tutorial.)

The girls then added 1/2 cup of milk and an 8 oz. carton of plain yogurt. Then they took turns blending until our drink was smooth and creamy.

That’s it! It was that simple.

This is probably one of the easiest recipes for Indian food you can find.

By the time we were done blending, the girls were excited to try it. We poured, added straws, and slurped away. Yummy!

While we were enjoying our lassis, I searched YouTube for some examples of traditional and contemporary Indian music. This example of Indian folk music and dance was one of our favorites and we also enjoyed this example.

I hope you have fun exploring India and all of the other countries we’ll be visiting!

Welcome to “Around The World in 12 Dishes”. We will be taking you on a journey around the world, (loosely) following in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps, exploring 12 different countries with our children, by cooking 12 dishes with them. One for each country visited. The world is such a wonderfully diverse and colorful place. Our children see maps, flags and books. They see postcards and maybe they see films about the world.. but let’s really bring it to life through food! Taste and smell don’t often get explored, we think this would be wonderfully fun and interesting for you and your children.

Around the World in 12 Dishes

We had started our journey the same way Phileas Fogg did in London, UK, and Stockholm, Sweden continued on to Moscow in Russia. Now our next stop is New Delhi, capital of the exotic sub-continent of India!

• March 4 – First country was the UK
• April 1 – The second country was Sweden
• May 6 – The third country was Russia
• June 3 – The fourth country is India

How to join the fun!

• The only mandatory part is the dish, the rest is all up to you, we just thought it would be fun and more concrete to the kids as to why we are making a unusual dish.
• Cook a dish from India: The goal is to explore this country through FOOD and activities if you wish. Make a typical dish (sweet or savoury) from the country with the kids, take photos and have fun!
• Typical dishes: Butter chicken, Tandoori Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, Rogan Josh and Naan.
• Print your passport: Click here to download, comes with space for a photo of the child with the dish. Here is a little cover for it if you wish 🙂
• Color a placemat: Once colored/painted or whatever other way you want to do this, you can laminate it or put it between clear contact paper to use it over and over. Great conversation piece for you and your kids. Click here to download it.
• Make a craft: you can make a country related craft with the kids [optional!]
• Read a book: Check in at Glittering Muffins for a review for “T is for Taj Mahal”.
• Fun fact: India actually is the birthplace of the number zero! The rule for its use was first shown in Brahmagupta’s book “Brahamasputha Siddhanta” in 624 AD!