Great Entertaining

Great Entertaining

Required:

• Globe or atlas
• Reference books

What's cooking? A meal for very important visiting dignitaries from far away, and you and your child have to plan it!

First, decide where the visitors hale from by spinning a globe and stopping it with your finger (or by flipping the pages of an atlas or map and arbitrarily pointing to a spot). Whichever city or country your finger lands on will be your travelers' homeland.

Then, use whatever reference books you have available (encyclopedias, atlases, travel guides, and the like) to plan the meal. Ask your child to suggest a menu that includes the dignitaries' native foods. Find out from your junior chef what ingredients you'll need for each course, how long the foods will take to prepare, and so on.

Your child might also do some additional research and tell you what the same travelers would have eaten five hundred years ago. How have common foods in the place you've selected changed over the last few centuries or so? One thing is sure—ancient Romans never microwaved their pizza pies!