Whenever I choose a recipe for our cooking projects, I like to link it to our theme. The Winter Olympics were tricky at first. My first thought was “healthy athlete food”, followed by Russian food. Unfortunately, most traditional Russian recipes I found were either not very healthy (or I should say, too heavy) or not easily made/cooked in a classroom with limited time and equipment. I finally came across a Russian carrot salad (apparently also very popular in the South).
The project was very simple: the children mixed the dressing ingredients and we then added it to the carrot and raisin mixture. Nothing too complicated. And, of course, a lot of tasting was involved. Because we couldn’t add carrots and raisins without making sure we liked them! 🙂
Russian Carrot-Raisin Salad:
Ingredients:
- 4 cups of shredded carrots
- 1 cup of raisins
- 1/4 cup of plain Greek yogurt
- 3 tablespoons of milk
- 2 tablespoons of sugar
What’s Next?
- In a small bowl, whisk together the yogurt, milk and sugar.
- In a large bowl, mix the carrots and raisins. Add the yogurt mixture and mix well.
- Refrigerate for 30-60 minutes before serving.
This week was more about the experience: we told the children we were traveling to Russia to make our snack. We showed them on a map where America was and how far our plane would go to get to the Olympic village. As we had practiced our Olympic sports all week (during circle time, we pretended to ice-skate, ski, play hockey, etc), we told them we were finally ready to participate in the Olympics, but like any great athletes, we needed to eat well to be ready to compete! Our toddlers, who recently started responding much more to pretend play, really seemed to enjoy the full experience. Most of them went through a full plate of carrot salad! It was definitely nice to have them enjoy such a common vegetable in a different form.
The Hungry Quebbie 