What's For Dinner? Story of the World Feast

Today's What's For Dinner? post is about a FEAST we had to celebrate a study of Ancient Africa (as done in chapter 11 of The Story of the World). I used two recipes from the activity guide and they were wonderful, so I wanted to share. If you click on the link you'll see a sample of all the activities from a chapter, via The Well Trained Mind website - awesome!) I'll also share a cute and easy craft idea, and a sweet idea my daughter came up with on her own.

As always, if you have a recipe you would like to link up, please share at the end of this post! All I ask is that you link back to my site, either by linking to me in your post, or grabbing my cute What's For Dinner? button and placing it on your blog or in your post. Thanks!

On to the recipe: (this appears in the activity guide for Volume 1 of Story of the World)

Chicken With Figs

3-4 lbs. chicken legs
1 lemon
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup water
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
8-16 oz. dried figs (we used Mission Figlets)
salt to taste
parsley

Preheat the oven to 400.

Peel and slice the lemon. Place lemon slices and figs in the bottom of a 9x13 baking pan. Add the chicken legs.

In mixing bowl, combine the brown sugar, vinegar, water, and lemon juice.

Pour mixture over the chicken. Sprinkle chicken with salt and parsley.

Bake, covered with foil, for about 40 minutes. Remove foil and bake for approximately 20-30 minutes. Baste frequently during the last 20-30 minutes. Remove chicken, figs, and lemon slices and place on a serving tray.

Skim off any fat and use the remaining juices as a sauce for the chicken.

* We served the chicken with green beans and rice. The chicken was amazingly juicy and the baked figs are a new found love of mine! For dessert we made fried plantains. We used a recipe from Food Network instead of our activity guide, and it was delicious! My nine year sliced the plantains - I fried them in the oil - then she sugared them and added whipped cream. YUMMM!!!!

For fun decorations we printed and colored African Masks. To print them, go here. I thought they turned out really cute.... we laminated and taped them onto a straw so they can be used in the future. We also read a little about the history of African Masks/art here. My daughter also looked up African proverbs, copied some onto little pieces of paper, and set one at each person's place. (I wish I had gotten a picture of them, but here is a wonderful list of proverbs -- perfect for copywork!)

My daughter's mask - done to perfection, just as she likes it!

Isn't this guy cute? My six year old is an enthusiastic artist

Once again, The Story of The World proves itself to be an invaluable resource in our homeschool. I can't recommend this enough!

Feel free to share a recipe with me via a comment or by joining the linky. I look forward to seeing What's For Dinner in your house!

Story of the World Volume 1 Resources - Updated

Have I mentioned how glad I am we started Story of the World in January? So far (just six chapters into the book) we are loving the stories and format of the activity guide. You can see what we are doing on my SOTW page here.

Today my little guy was sold on the comics of Joseph's story: Lost and Found. He loves comics and this caught his attention. What I love is that SOTW is capturing both of my children's attention, making planning and teaching easier for me!

Fantastic Find for Egypt

The Thursday link up theme at The Homeschool Village in February is "Fantastic Finds". Yesterday when we got home from a big trip to Sam's (not my favorite thing to do, but it had to be done!), the kids sat down at the dining room table and worked on a puzzle we had gotten last week at a local bookstore.

When my daughter picked out the puzzle I let her get it because both she and my son were so excited about seeing everything they were learning about in The Story of The World in the puzzle. It was just a hands-on review in a little tin - I loved it! While they worked on the puzzle I could hear them talking about Osiris, King Tut, Hierogylphics, Sarcaphagus (my little guy loves that word!) etc... and I took the opportunity to pepper them with questions as well.

If you're learning about Ancient Egypt I would really recommend this little puzzle - 100 pieces, so it's very achievable for the younger set. I think we'll put some puzzle glue on it and frame it for our school room, to remind us of our journey to Egypt!

* I did a search and found the puzzle on Amazon and several other sites -- Amazon is the cheapest. It was, however, a fantastic little find in a local shop - which is why I love it so much!

Hop over to the Homeschool Village today and see what other fantastic finds homeschoolers are talking about!